Doorways in the Sand (7 page)

"Do you hear me, Fred?"-the twilight velvet.

"Yes"-my glowing scales.

"Better, better, better. . ."

"What/who?"

"Closer, closer, that not a sound betray .. ."

"There?"

"Better, that cease the subvocals . . ."

"I do not understand."

"Later for that. But one thing, a thing to say: Article 7224, Section C. Say it."

"Article 7224, Section C. Why?"

"If they wish to take you away-and they will-say it. But not why. Remember."

"Yes, but-"

"Later for that . . ."

A thing of textures and shadings: bright, brighter, smooth, smoother. Hard. Clear.

Lying there in my sling during Wakeful Period One:

"How are you feeling now?" Ragma asked.

"Tired, weak, still thirsty."

"Understandable. Here, drink this."

"Thanks. Tell me what happened. Was I hit?"

"Yes, you were hit twice. Fairly superficial. We have repaired the damage. The healing should be complete in a matter of hours."

"Hours? How many have passed since we departed?"

"Three, approximately. I carried you aboard after you fell. We lifted off, leaving your assailants, the continent, the planet, behind. We are in orbit about your world now, but we will be departing it shortly."

"You must be stronger than you look to have carried me."

"Apparently so."

"Where do you intend taking me from here?"

"To another planet-a most congenial one. The name would mean nothing to you."

"Why?"

"Safety and necessity. You seem to be in a position to provide information that could be very helpful in an investigation with which we are connected. We wish to obtain that information, but there are others who would like to have it also! Because of them, you would be in danger on your own planet. So, for purposes of insuring your safety as well as furthering our inquiry, the simplest thing is to remove you."

"Ask me. I'm not ungrateful for the rescue. What do you want to know? If it is the same thing Zeemeister and Buckler wanted, though. I'm afraid I can't be of much help."

"We are operating under that assumption. We believe that the information we require of you exists at an unconscious level, however. The best means of extracting something of that sort is through the offices of a good telepathic analyst. There are many such in the place we will be visiting."

"How long will we be there?"

"You will remain there until we have completed our investigation."

"And how long will that take?"

He sighed and shook his head.

"At this point it is impossible to say."

I felt the soft blackness brush like the tail of a passing cat against me. Not yet! No . . . I couldn't just let them haul me off that way for an indefinite leave of absence from everything I knew. It was in that moment that I appreciated the deathbed peeve-loose ends, all the little things that should be wrapped up before you go away: write that letter, settle up those accounts, finish the book on the night table . . . If I dropped out at this point in the semester, it would screw me up academically, financially-and who would buy my explanation? No. I had to stop them from taking me away. But the smooth to soft shadings were on the rise once more. I had to be quick.

"I'm sorry," I managed, "but that is impossible. I can't go with . . ."

"I am afraid that you must. It is absolutely necessary," he said.

"No," I said, panicking, fighting against fading before I could settle this. "No-you can't."

"I believe a similar concept exists in your own jurisprudence. You call it 'protective custody.' "

"What about Article 7224, Section C?" I blurted out, feeling my speech slip over into a slur as my eyes fell closed.

"What did you say?"

"You heard me," I remember muttering. "Seven . . . two . . . two . . . four. Sec . . . tion . . . C . . . That's why..."

And then, again, nothing.

The cycles of awareness bore me back-to consciousness or within spitting distance of it-several times more before I stuck at something approaching full wakefulness and filled it with California-watching. It was by degrees that I became aware of the argument that filled the air, obtaining its content in a detached, academic sort of way. They were upset over something that I had said.

Oh yes . . .

Article 7224, Section C. It had to do, I gathered, with the removal of intelligent creatures from their home planets without their consent. Part of a galactic treaty to which my rescuers' worlds were signatory, it was the closest thing to an interstellar constitution that they had. There was, however, sufficient ambiguity in the present situation to make for a debatable issue, in that there was also provision for removal without consent for a variety of overriding causes, such as quarantine for species protection, non-military reprisal for violations of certain other provisions, a kind of sensitive catchall for "interstellar security" and several more along these lines, all of which they discussed and rediscussed at great length. I had obviously touched on a delicate area, especially in light of the recency of their initial contact with Earth. Ragma kept insisting that if they chose one of the exceptions as controlling and removed me on that basis, their legal department would back them up. If it ever actually came to a point where an adjudication became necessary and they were reversed, he felt that he and Charv would not be held especially liable for their interpretation of the law, in that they were field operatives rather than trained legal personnel. Charv, meanwhile, maintained that it was obvious that none of the exceptions applied and that it would be even more obvious what they had done. Better, he decided, to let the telepathic analyst they employed implant the desire to cooperate within my mind. There were several, he was certain, who could be persuaded to solve their problem in that fashion. But this irritated Ragma. It would be a clear violation of my rights under another provision, as well as concealment of the evidence of their violation under this one. He would have no part of it. If they were going to move me, he wanted a defense other than concealment. So they reviewed the exceptions again, pondering each word, letting the words talk to each other, recalling past cases, sounding the while like Jesuits, Talmudists, dictionary editors or disciples of the New Criticism. We continued to orbit the Earth.

It was not until much later that Charv interrupted things with a question that had been bothering me all along: "Where did he learn about Article 7224, anyway?"

They repaired to the sling, interrupting my view of storm patterns off Cape Hatteras. Seeing that my eyes were open, they nodded and gestured in what I believe they intended as a pantomime of good will and concern.

"Have you been resting well?" Charv inquired.

"Quite."

"Water?"

"Please."

I drank some, then: "Sandwich?" he asked.

"Yes. Thanks."

He produced one and I began eating.

"We have been quite concerned over your well-being-and about doing the right thing in your case."

"That is good of you."

"We have been wondering about something that you said a while back, dealing with our offer to provide you with sanctuary during a fairly routine investigation we will be conducting on your planet. It seemed as if you cited a section of the Galactic Code just before you dropped off to sleep last time. But you mumbled somewhat and we could not be certain. Was this the case?"

"Yes."

"I see," he said, adjusting his sunglasses. "Would you mind telling us how you became acquainted with its provisions?"

"Such things travel quickly in academic circles," I offered, which was the best response I could locate in my supply of misleading statements.

"It is possible," said Ragma, dropping back into whatever they had been speaking earlier. "Their scholars have been working on translations. They may be completed by now and circulating about their universities. It is not my department, so I cannot be certain."

"And if somebody has put together a course on the subject, this one has probably taken it," said Charv. "Yes. Unfortunate."

"Then you must be aware," Charv continued, switching back to English and aiming it in my direction, "that your planet is not yet signatory to the agreement."

"Of course," I replied. "But then, my concern is really with your own actions under its provisions."

"Yes, of course," he said, glancing at Ragma.

Ragma moved nearer, his unblinking wombat eyes holding something like a glare.

"Mister Cassidy," he said, "let me put it as simply as possible. We are law officers-cops, if you like-with a job to do. I regret that we cannot give you the particulars, as it would probably make it much easier to obtain your cooperation. As it is, your presence on your planet would represent a distinct impediment to us, while your absence would make things considerably simpler. As we have already told you, if you remain you will be in some danger. Bearing this in mind, it seems obvious that we would both be best served if you would agree to a small vacation."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Then perhaps," he went on, "I may appeal to your venality as well as your much-lauded primate adventuresomeness. A trip like this would probably cost you a fortune if you could arrange it yourself, and you would have an opportunity to see sights none of your kind has ever witnessed before."

It did get through to me, that. At any other time I would not have hesitated. But my feelings had just then sorted themselves out. It went without saying that something was amiss and that I was a part of it. But it was more than the world that was out of whack. Something that I did not understand had happened/was happening to me. I grew convinced that the only way I could discover it and remedy or exploit it was to stay home and do my own investigating. I was doubtful that anyone else's would serve my ends as I would have them served.

So: "I am sorry," I repeated.

He sighed, turned away, looked out the port and regarded the Earth.

Finally: "Yours is a very stubborn race," he said.

When I did not respond, he added, "But so is mine. We must return you if you insist. But I will find a way to achieve the necessary results without your cooperation."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"If you are lucky," he said, "you may live to regret vour decision."

Hanging there, tensing and untensing my muscles to counteract the pendulum effect of the long, knotted line, I examined the penny on which Lincoln faced to the left. It looked precisely the way a penny would look if I were regarding it in a mirror, reversed lettering and all. Only I was holding it in the palm of my hand.

Beside/below me, where I dangled but a couple of feet above the floor, hummed the Rhennius machine: three jet-black housings set in a line on a circular platform that rotated slowly in a counterclockwise direction, the end units each extruding a shaft-one vertical, one horizontal-about which passed what appeared to be a Moebius strip of a belt almost a meter in width, one strand half running through a tunnel in the curved and striated central unit, which faintly resembled a wide hand cupped as in the act of scratching.

Pumping my knees, feet braced against the terminal knot, I set up a gentle swaying that bore me, moments later, back above the ingoing aperture of the middle component. Lowering myself, extending my arm, I dropped the penny onto the belt, was halted at the end of my arc, began the return swing. Still crouched and reaching, I snared the penny as it emerged.

Not what I had expected. Not at all, and no indeed.

In that its first journey through the innards of the thing had reversed the coin, I had assumed that running it through the works again would return it to normal. Instead, I now held a metal disk on which the design was properly oriented but was incised, intaglio-like, rather than raised. This applied to both sides, and in the place of the milling the edges were step-recessed, like a train wheel.

Curiouser and curiouser. I would simply have to do it again to see what happened next. I straightened, gripped the line with my knees, began to redirect my errant arc.

For a moment I glanced up into the gloom where my thirty-foot puppet string reached to its shadowy bar. An I-beam, too near the ceiling to mount, I had traversed it aardvark-style-ankles locked above, letting my fingers do the walking. I wore a dark sweater and trousers and had on thin-soled suede boots. I had carried the line coiled about my left shoulder until I had reached a point as near to being directly above the apparatus as was possible.

I had made my way in through a skylight I had had to jimmy after cutting away some grillwork and jump-wiring three alarms in a fashion that produced a small nostalgia for my abandoned major in electrical engineering. The hall below was dim, the only illumination provided by a series of floor-level spots that encircled the display and concentrated their beams upward upon it. A low guardrail enclosed the machine, and concealed electric eyes fenced it invisibly. Sensor plates within the floor and the platform would betray a footstep. There was a television camera bolted to my beam. I had turned it slowly, slightly, so that it was still focussed on the display-only farther southward, as I planned to descend on the north side where the belt was flattest just before it reached the central unit-a guesstimate, from those four courses in TV production. There were guards in the building, but one had just made his rounds and I planned to be quick. All plans have their limits and hazards, which is why insurance companies get rich.

The night was cloudy and a very cold wind went around in it. My breath flapped ghostly wings and flew away. The only witness to my finger-numbing exercises on the roof was a tired-looking cat crouched in the scuttleway. The chill had been about when I had arrived in town the night before, a journey resulting from a decision I had reached on Hal's couch the previous day.

After Charv and Ragma had, at my request, set me down about fifty miles out of town during the dark of the moon, I had hitched rides and gotten back to my neighborhood well after midnight. And a good thing it was that I had.