“What parts are untrue?”
“All of it. What is the-”
A Soviet newscaster was talking hysterically. Although it was in Russian, Hunt somehow understood. The war had to start now, before the West could turn its advantage into something tangible
• . . speeches from a balcony; crowds chanting and cheering. .
launchings of U.S. MIRV satellites. . . propaganda from Washington. . . tanks, missile transporters, marching lines of Chinese infantry. . . high-power radiation weapons hidden in deep space
across the solar system. A race that had gone insane was marching off to doomsday with bands playing and flags waving.
“NO-O-O-O!” He heard his own voice rise to a shriek that seemed to come from all sides to engulf him, and then die somewhere far off in the distance. His strength evaporated abruptly, and he felt himself collapsing.
“He speaks the truth,” a voice said from somewhere. It was calm and decisive, and sounded like a lone rock of sanity amid the maelstrom of chaos that had swept him out of the universe.
Collapsing. . . falling. . . blackness. . . nothing.
chapter nine
Hunt was dozing in what felt like a soft and very comfortable armchair. He was relaxed and refreshed, as if he had been there for some time. The memory of his experience was still vivid, but it lingered only as something that he regarded in a detached, almost academically curious, kind of way. The terror had gone. The air around him smelt fresh and slightly scented, and subdued music was playing in the background. After a few seconds it registered as a Mozart string quartet. What kind of insanity was he part of now?
He opened his eyes, straightened up, and looked around. He was in an armchair, and the chair was part of an ordinary-looking room, furnished in contemporary style with another, similar chair, reading desk, a large wooden table in the center, a side-table near the door set with an ornate vase of roses, and a thick carpet of dark brown pile that blended fairly well with the predominantly orange and brown decor. There was a single window behind him, covered by heavy drapes that were closed and billowing gently in the breeze coming through from the outside. He looked down at himself and found that he was wearing a dark blue, open-necked shirt and light gray slacks. There was nobody else in the room.
After a few seconds he got up, found that he felt fine, and strolled across the room to part the drapes curiously. Outside was a pleasant, summery scene that could have been part of any major city on Earth. Tail buildings gleamed clean and white in the sun, familiar trees and open green spaces beckoned, and Hunt could see the curve of a wide river immediately below, an older-style bridge with a railed parapet and rounded arches, familiar models of groundcars moving along the roadways, and processions of airmobiles in the sky. He let the drapes fall back as they had been and glanced at his watch, which seemed to be working normally. Less than twenty minutes had passed since the “Boeing” touched down at McClusky. Nothing made sense.
He turned his back to the window and thrust his hands into his
pockets while he thought back and tried to remember something that had been puzzling him even before he stepped out of the spacecraft. It had been something trivial, something that had barely registered in the few moments that had elapsed between Calazar’s brief appearance inside the craft and Hunt’s first glimpse of the stupefying scene that had greeted him outside just before everything went crazy. It had been something to do with Calazar.
And then it came to him. In the Shapieron, zoaAc had interpreted between Ganymeans and humans by means of earpiece and throat-mike devices that provided normal-sounding synthesized voices, but which did not synchronize with the facial movements of the original speakers. But Calazar had spoken without any such aids, and apparently quite effortlessly. What made it all the more peculiar was that the Ganymean larynx produced a low, guttural articulation and was utterly incapable of reproducing a human pitch even approximately. So how had Calazar done it, and without looking like a badly dubbed movie at that?