The Paradox Men Read online

  “Not necessarily,” replied the judge coldly. “But you may form your own opinion. Five years ago a strange space ship crashed into the upper Ohio River. Certain flotsam was recovered from the wreckage that indicated it must have come from outer space. Two living things were recovered from it. One was a strange ape-like animal later captured by the River Police and given to Haze-Gaunt. The other was—you. We immediately got a note from Kennicot Muir concerning your disposition.”

  “But he’s dead!” interjected Alar.

  The judge smiled grimly. “He is thought to be dead by the Imperial Government and by the world outside. As I say, we got a note from him to the effect that you were to be enrolled in the Society as soon as your emotional pattern was stabilized. You were to be given routine assignments involving but little physical danger, and you were to be studied.

  “It was Muir’s opinion that possibly you were a species of man of rather special properties—that your ancestral line had evolved beyond homo sapiens into something that could be of immense help to us in averting the impending Operations Finis that Haze-Gaunt may launch at any hour. Very early we discovered that your heart accelerates before you consciously detect danger.

  “We know now that your subconscious mind synthesizes impressions and stimuli of which your conscious mind is unaware, and prepares your body for the unseen peril, whatever it is. This was good but not good enough for us to place you beyond homo sapiens or to absolve you completely from suspicion as a planted spy.

  “We waited for other manifestations of your possible ultra-humanity but nothing more was forthcoming. And after your probable treachery tonight, your threat to the existence of the Society outweighs its desire to continue studying you.”

  So his earlier life would soon be sealed forever. Did no one know? He demanded, “Is Muir present now? Does he agree to my death?”

  “Muir is not present, and as a matter of fact none of us has seen him in the flesh since his disappearance. But you can be sure he knows of this trial. So far he has not disagreed. Do you have any more questions? If not, the time for your defense must begin to run. You have ten minutes.”

  With pale face Alar studied his executioners. Many of them must have shared perilous adventures with him but would now kill him willingly to save the Society. His heartbeat was mounting steadily. Two hundred. It had never been so high.

  “Any defense”—his coolness amazed him—“that I might bring forward would be so implausible and incredible from the point of view of most of you that it would be a waste of precious minutes to attempt any explanation whatever. If I have ten minutes to live—”

  “Nine,” corrected the clerk firmly.

  “Then I intend to use them to save my life. John!”

  “Yes, boy?” Haven’s voice shook a little.

  “John, if you believe that I am innocent, please explain this to me—what is the chemical basis of eyesight?”

  The biologist looked startled but instantly recovered his poise. Blood began to flood back into his cheeks. “It is generally agreed,” he declared, “that photons reflected from the thing being viewed enter the pupil of the eye and are focussed as they pass through the vitreous and aqueous humors to the retina, where an image is formed.

  “There they impinge upon the visual purple, which then gives off a substance to which the retinal rods and cones are sensitive. The rods and cones pass the stimulus on to the retinal nerve endings, which gather finally into the great optic nerve and register the image in the crevasses of the optic lobe at the base of the brain.”

  “Would you say that it is quite impossible for the reverse of that process to occur?”

  “Reverse? You mean, where the brain conceives an image, passes it along the optic nerve to the retina, and the visual purple is so stimulated that it releases photons that are focussed by the eyes’ refractive fluids to project an image? Do you mean to ask whether your eyes may be capable of projecting an image as well as receiving one? Is that what you mean?”

  “Precisely. Is it impossible?”

  The men strained forward in puzzled attention.

  “You have three minutes,” reminded the clerk sharply, looking from Alar to Haven and back again.

  Haven fixed eyes wide with surmise on his protégé. “Visual projection has been predicted for the creature that may follow homo sapiens in the evolutionary scale. This power may evolve within the next fifty or a hundred millennia. But now, in modern man? Highly improbable.

  “However”—he raised a warning hand in a gesture full of hidden meaning—“if someone were able to project light beams from his eyes—if he were able to do that he ought to be able to reverse other stimulus-response systems. For example, he should be able to turn the tympanum of the ear into a speech membrane, by activation of the cochlear nerves with the cerebral auditory tract. In a word, he should be able to reproduce aurally—not orally—any sound he can imagine!”

  Alar stole a glance at the dim fluorescent tube in the ceiling fixture. A warm flush crept quickly up his throat. He knew now that he would live and not die—that he would live to unravel the gray net that enshrouded his past—that he would leave the Thieves and that he would henceforth search for himself in earnest. But there was much to be done yet, and he was far from being out of danger. He awakened to the voice of the judge:

  “What did you hope to accomplish by that senseless discussion with Dr. Haven? Only thirty seconds of time remain for your defense.”

  Around him there was the eerie sliding of finely wrought steel on steel. All the Thieves except Haven had drawn their blades and were watching him with feline intentness.

  Alar stared upward at the ancient fluorescent light. It reminded him of the searchlight beam glowing through the dust cloud when he was trapped that time in the slave underground. There was no more mystery now about his escape then. He knew the explanation for the figure in the tattered coat, the figure that appeared to be his own. The figure had indeed been his own. It had been an image of his own body projected on the settling dust. He had not known the extent of his ability to reverse his stimulus-response system, and yet, subconsciously, with the wish to see himself escape he had created a photic image of himself—and the wish had been fulfilled.

  He closed one eye and concentrated feverishly on the dim tube in the ceiling, trying to reawaken his wonderful power. This time it might save him again, although in a different way. If he could only impinge enough photons of the proper quanta and frequency on the fluorescent coating of the lamp, he believed he could fill in the troughs of the emitted photonwaves and throw the room into darkness.

  The light seemed to flicker a little.

  His breath was like that of a panting dog and sweat was streaming into his open eye. A few feet in front of him a Thief raised his blade level with Alar’s heart and sighted along it coolly.

  Haven’s nervous whisper rasped behind him. “Fluorescent light is higher on the spectrum. Raise your frequency a little.”

  The executioner lunged at him.

  The room went dark.

  Alar held his left hand over the nasty cut in his chest and slipped away a few feet. Not far—he had to stay in the open in order to control the lamp. Life now would depend on the boldest improvisation.

  No one had moved. All around him came the accelerated expectant breathing of the men who wanted to kill him—as soon as they could distinguish his dark form from themselves.

  Then—

  His right ear heard sounds coming from his left ear:

  “Let no one move! Alar must still be in the room. We’ll find him as soon as we have a light. Number twenty-fourteen, go immediately to the outer office and obtain emergency lighting.” It was a reasonable facsimile of the judge’s voice. The danger was, did the judge think so too?

  Alar backed off quickly two paces and said in muffled tones, “Yes, sir.”

  How soon would it take someone to remember that Number twenty-fourteen was stationed down the corridor?

  Agai
n the tense silence as he edged backward towards the door. It was a fantastically difficult task to avoid cutting off his view of the lamp. He pushed fellow Thieves apologetically out of the way as he stumbled ever backwards. But only one man need walk in front of his line of vision and his control of the lamp would vanish in a blaze of light. A dozen blades would cut him down.

  He sensed the door now beside him, the guard in front of it.

  “Who is it?” The guard’s tense question shot from the dark, a bare foot away.

  “Twenty-fourteen,” Alar whispered quickly. He could feel warm blood trickling down his leg. He must find bandages soon.

  A heated, sibilant argument was in progress somewhere in the room. He caught the word “twenty-fourteen” once.

  “Your honor!” called someone nasally.

  He listened to the guard hesitate in the very act of sliding back the bolts. His hoax would be exposed in seconds. “Hurry up!” he whispered impatiently.

  “You have the floor!” called the judge to the nasal Thief.

  The guard stood motionless, listening.

  “If Alar escapes because of your delay,” hissed Alar to him, “you’ll be responsible.”

  But the man stood immobile.

  Again that nasal voice from the other side of the room—“Your honor, some of us are of the understanding that Number twenty-fourteen is actually stationed at the far end of the exit corridor. If this is so your orders that he leave the room must have been answered by Alar!”

  It was out.

  “My orders?” came the astounded reply. “I gave no orders. I thought it was the sergeant of the guard! Door guard! Let no one whatever leave the room!”

  The bolts clanged shut before him with grim finality. With a last despairing blast of mental effort Alar reactivated the dampened fluorescent bulb with a shaft of dazzling blue light.

  Pandemonium broke loose.

  A split second later he had knocked down the blinded guard, drawn the bolts and was out while a score of men groped inside. But their retinal over-stimulation would wear off quickly and he must hurry. He looked up the corridor. Number twenty-fourteen and his detail blocked that path. He knotted his fists, then turned to study the dead end of the corridor behind him—and his hand flew futilely to his empty scabbard.

  Someone was standing there in the cul-de-sac.

  “You can escape this way.”

  “Keiris!” he exclaimed softly.

  “You’d best come quickly.”

  He was immediately beside her. “But how—?”

  “No questions now.” She pushed open a narrow panel in the wall, and they stepped behind it just as the trial room burst open. They listened to the muffled but grim voices from beyond the panel.

  “Don’t underestimate them,” whispered the woman, pulling him up the dark passage by the hand. “They’ll question the guard up the corridor, then scour this end. They’ll find the panel within sixty seconds.”

  Soon they were in a dim-lit alley at the first street level.

  “What now?” he panted.

  “My coupé is over there.”

  “So?”

  She stopped and looked up at him gravely. “You are free for a little while, my friend, but your reason must tell you that you can expect to be caught within a matter of hours. The I.P.’s are combing the city for you, block by block, house by house, room by room.

  “All roads from the city are closed. All non-police aircraft are grounded. And the Thieves are looking for you too. Their methods will be less gross but even more efficient. If you try to escape without a plan or without assistance the Thieves will certainly recapture you.”

  “I’m with you,” he said shortly, taking her arm. They got into the coupé silently.

  The gloomy alleyway began to race by them as the atom-powered rotors gathered speed.

  “You’ll find antibiotics and astringents in the first-aid kit,” said the woman coolly. “You’ll have to dress your wound yourself. Please do it quickly.”

  He ripped off his coat, shirt and underwear with blood-slippery fingers. The antibiotic powder stung and the astringent brought tears to his eyes. He slapped adhesive gauze over the wound.

  “You’ll find more clothes in the bundle beside you.”

  He felt too weak to bring up the question of propriety. He unwrapped the bundle.

  “You are in the process of assuming the identity of one Dr. Philip Ames, Astrophysicist,” Keiris informed him.

  Alar zipped up his new shirt in silence, then loosened his belt and changed his trousers.

  “Actually,” continued the woman tersely, “Ames doesn’t exist except in certain Government transcripts. The wallet in your inside coat pocket contains your new personal papers, a ticket for the next lunar flight and your sealed orders from the Imperial Astrophysics Laboratory, countersigned by Haze-Gaunt.”

  There was some tremendous fact staring at him that he couldn’t quite grasp. If only he weren’t so tired. “I assume,” he said slowly, “that the Imperial Laboratory knows that Haze-Gaunt is sending a man to Lunar, but doesn’t know who is being sent. Otherwise, I would be exposed immediately as an impostor.

  “I must assume, too, that Haze-Gaunt, if he has thought about it at all, believes he is sending an Imperial Astrophysicist whose identity is known only to him. Such double deception must have been planned and executed by a third person.”

  Now he had it!

  And he was just as much in the dark as ever. He turned to the woman accusingly. “Only one intellect could have calculated the probability of my escape from Shey and where my trial by the Society would be held. Only one man could have controlled Haze-Gaunt’s course of action in selecting ‘Ames’—The Meganet Mind!”

  “It was he.”

  Alar took a deep breath. “But why should he try to save the life of a Thief?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think it’s because he wants you to discover something vital at Lunar, something in a fragment of sky map. It’s all in your orders. Besides, the Mind is a secret Thief sympathizer.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Nor I. We weren’t supposed to.”

  Alar felt completely lost, out of his depth. A few minutes before the world consisted neatly of Thieves and Imperials. Now he felt vividly the impact of a brain that treated both factions as children—an inconceivably deep brain that labored with infinite skill and patience toward—what?

  “That’s Lunar Terminus ahead,” said his companion. “Your luggage has already been checked aboard. They’ll examine your visa carefully but I don’t think there’ll be any trouble. If you want to change your mind this is your last chance.”

  Haze-Gaunt and the Imperial Laboratory would eventually get together and compare notes. A brief vision of being cornered by hard-bitten I.P.’s in the tiny Lunar Observatory settlement flashed into Alar’s mind and his saber hand twitched uneasily.

  And yet—just what was on the star plate? And why had the Meganet Mind picked him to discover it? Could it throw any light on his identity?

  Of course he would go!

  “Goodbye, then, Keiris,” he said gently. “Incidentally there’s something I ought to warn you about. It’s known at the chancellory that you’re missing right now. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. It will be very dangerous for you to return. Can’t you come with me?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet—not yet.”

  10

  The Questioning

  AS SHE HURRIED up the secret stairway to her chancellory apartment, Keiris’s calm exterior belied the tumult within her—the same tumult that had been raging from the moment Alar’s lithe form had dropped over her window sill earlier in the evening. The armor that she had carefully built up around her since Kim’s disappearance (was he really dead?) had fallen about her in ruins.

  Why should an unknown Thief affect her this way?

  His unmasked face had provided no clue. That was disappointing, because she never forgot a face. And yet her
first glimpse of that rather broad soft face with the incongruously hard dark eyes, instead of dismissing the problem as nonexistent, had accentuated it.

  She knew that she had never seen that face before. She also knew that he was utterly familiar—as much a part of her as the clothes she wore. Was that disloyal to Kim? It depended on how she meant it.

  As she stood before the panel opening into her bathroom, she found herself blushing.

  She shrugged her shoulders. No time now for analysis of personal feelings. Haze-Gaunt would be waiting for her in her bedroom, wondering where she’d been. Thank heaven for his fantastic jealousy. He’d only half-believe her anyway, but it provided a queer sort of security for her—a status quo consistently defined by its very insecurity.

  She sighed and started sliding the panel back.

  At least she’d have time to take a shower and have her women rub her down with rose petals. That would give her more time to invent answers for the questions that Haze-Gaunt would certainly ask. And then she’d squeeze into that low-necked—

  “Have a pleasant outing?” asked Haze-Gaunt.

  She would have screamed if her tongue hadn’t stuck to the roof of her mouth. But she gave no exterior sign of shock. She got a full deep breath into her lungs and it was over.

  She looked at the three intruders with outward calm. Haze-Gaunt was staring at her in gloomy uncertainty, legs spread, hands locked behind his back. Shey was beaming in happy anticipation. The deep lines in General Thurmond’s face were, on the whole, noncommittal. Possibly the parentheses enclosing his small dash of a mouth looked a little harder, a little crueler.

  Her heart beat faster. For the first time since Haze-Gaunt had placed her in his quarters she felt a thrill of physical fear. Her mind simply refused to accept the implications of Haze-Gaunt accompanied by the two most merciless monsters in the Imperium.