The woman had gone into the kitchen, and now she .; returned with a tray. There was a bowl of stew, a hunk of bread, and a tankard of evil-smelling liquid, which probably passed for wine in this establishment.
Ray took a coin from the thief’s pouch and saw her eyes widen a fraction as she beheld it. Too much, he told himself. He did not slide it across the table, as he had first intended, but kept it between two fingers so she saw only its edge.
She smiled, with some of the same attempt to ingratiate that had been in the look she had turned upon the dator.
“You want something else, my lord?”
“A room-where a man can rest privately-” he said.
“Rest,” she repeated. “Oh, perhaps we could find you such.” Her eyes flickered from him to that visible edge of coin, then back to his face. Then she pointed with her chin.
“Through there,” she said, indicating the entrance to
the back room, “and up the stair. Take the chamber with the blue curtain.”
3
Ray spun the coin. Her palm flattened it to the board and swept it into hiding somewhere about her person. He picked up the tray and took it with him, trying not to move with such haste as to arouse her suspicions any more.
The room with the blue door curtain was the second from the top of a breakneck flight of stairs. There had been two in the kitchen to watch him cross the end of that room-another woman, older, even less prepossessing than the hag-waitress, and a man with a bowed back who had been cutting up some stalked vegetables, so bent over his work that his chin was hard threatened by the sweep of his own knife.
Behind the blue curtain was a cell-like cubbyhole. . No chair or table existed, only a bed, which was no more than a pallet raised on a frame of four legs from the dirty floor, and a shelf on the wall on which stood a jug. But there was a window with shutters, now barred. H Ray set the tray on the shelf and went to open the window. It resisted his efforts, but some prying with his dagger point finally freed it, and he pushed open the slats of wood.
A few feet away was a blank stone wall, probably that of a neighboring building. Ray looked down. A narrow runway between walls was there, more than half choked with refuse, full of traps for the feet of anyone who tried to use it as a way of quick escape. But at least he felt a fraction easier with that window open and close to hand.
He sat down on the edge of the unwholesome looking and smelling pallet and began to eat. The stuff tasted strange, hot and peppery-probably over spiced to induce the buying of more drink. But it satisfied his hunger, and he ate it to the last drop, wiping the bowl with a crust of bread.
Then he leaned back against the wall to think. In his interview with Chronos, that implanted will had certainly taken over and dictated what he said. He had been keenly aware of that during the process. Also, he was more than certain that the rescue of the Murians had been directed, even if the details of the action along the way had been his alone. Therefore, both incidents had been part of the reason for his being here. But what else remained for him to do?
And how long must he sulk about waiting to be nudged into accomplishing whatever duty was his? His resentment of such management was no longer quick and hot, but it was a dull and lasting fire in him. Yet until such a time as he could face those who had sent him here, he must stifle that. A man could be blinded by anger and thus easily make a mistake.
Ray stared very hard out of the window at the wall. “All right.” His lips shaped the words he did not say aloud. “Here I am just waiting. If I wait too long, perhaps I am finished, and whatever you want of me goes undone. Come through wherever you are and give me a hint. What do you want of me?”
He tried to think that, to make it a silent cry, as if he could reach across three oceans to the mind of a
Naacal—or the Re Mu, or whoever had planted the compulsion in him.
It seemed that the stones in that wall darkened trees! Ray shut his eyes, then opened them again slowly. This was like looking through the wrong end of a pair of field glasses. Trees, row upon row of them-all tiny. Yet his mind told him that they were really tall-towering
No! That was not the answer-not the trees! He screwed his eyelids together in an intensity of effort. The trees had no part of this. He would not look at them, think of them
“Come in.” He thought of that will now as if it were a broadcast sent on interrupted frequencies, one he could only pick up now and then. He put his head down to rest on balled fists, his eyes still tightly closed. Come in, he begged, let me know what I am to do. Before it is too late, just let me know!
Fordham held the small strip of perforated paper in his hand. So Burton believed this was the answer, did he?
” `Do not spindle, bend, or tear,”’ Hargraves quoted. “I suppose we should be used to any sort of black, white, red, green, or blue magic by now, but somehow I refuse to accept that a man can be reduced to that! Frankly I don’t want to believe it. It’s-it’s obscene!”
“Not a man-no-” corrected Burton. “We asked for an equation that might fit a certain mind pattern so we, could set up what would amount to a homing device. Your own computer gave us that. Just as it provided you earlier with your equation for Atlantis.”
“Which might not have been correct at all!” flared Hargreaves. “All we saw, recorded, was a forest of trees, remember? I’ll believe in Atlantis when I see a little more definite proof.”
“All right, no one insisted upon its really being Atlantis,” returned Fordham. “But Dr. Burton is right. We fed in the data; we got an equation; we used that equation and got-what you saw for yourself, what we filmed. And we lost a man in there. It’s logical to believe that he hasn’t stayed right on that spot where he went to all this time. And if this will work-”
“1 f it will work,” stressed Hargreaves.
Fordham passed his hand over his face. He was tired, so tired that it was an effort to make the smallest move. When had he really slept? He could not remember now.
“It’s not all we should have,” Burton cut in. “You must understand that. We have the facts from his army record, reports from people who knew him, data from his last physical, and the like. I must set the odds very high against its working. But it is the best we can do. To have a better chance, we ought to have his behavior pattern charted, other reports, reaching back at least two years-”
“Since we don’t have those”-Fordham’s words slurred into each other wearily-“we’ll try this. Miracles have happened-”
Hargreaves shrugged. “I’m beginning to believe that General Colfax is right. Send in a search party-”
“And maybe lose them, too?” Fordham asked. “Not until we must.” He looked again at the strip of paper that, the computer reported, added up to a man-a living, breathing, walking, talking, thinking, hating, loving man. Or did it? They would never be sure, unless their long shot succeeded arid Ray Osborne came out of a forest of giant trees to face them and his own world again in answer to this experimental broadcast.
14
DANGER? Ray raised his head, listening intently. But there was no sound .from the hall outside. He stood up and stepped softly to look out of the window, down into that slit. No one stood there. Yet in him now there was such a feeling of being under close scrutiny that it was almost as if he could turn his head and see a figure in the other corner of the room.
Accompanying that sensation of being spied upon came a driving desire to be in the open, one he could not withstand any longer. The walls about him might be moving in to cut off air needed by his laboring lungs. Over all hung such an aura of menace as he had known before only in nightmares. Though he held onto remnants of caution, Ray knew that he could not stay in this temporary hiding place, that he was being tipped out of it as he himself might tip over a basket to set some small terrified animal on the run again.