Hanrahan knew practically every one of us, and he’s been lying out there for a week with a broken back, ever since they caught him trying to blow up the guard pits at East Gate. They had plenty of chance to pump him if they could. They can’t. Next thing. No more individual attacks on one exec. Not unless it’s a matter of life and death, and even then you’re wasting your time unless you’ve got a gun. They can grab your mind faster than you can cut a throat. Third thing: Don’t get the idea there are good execs and bad execs. Once they put that thing on their heads they’re all the same. Fourth thing. You can’t make deals. They aren’t that worried. So if anybody’s thinking of selling outI’m not saying anyone isforget it.” He looked around. “Anything else?”
“What about germ warfare in the water supply?” somebody ventured.
“Still looking into it. No report yet. All right, that’s enough for now. Meeting’s adjourned. Watch the ball game for a while, then drift away. One at a time”
Hsi was the first to go, then a couple of women, together, then a sprinkling of other men. Chandler, still numbed by the possibility that had opened before him, was in no particular hurry, although it seemed time to leave anyway.
The ball game appeared to be over. A ten-year-old with freckles on his face was at the plate, but he was leaning on his bat, staring at Chandler with wide, serious eyes.
Chandler felt a sudden chill.
He turned, began to walk awayand felt himself seized.
He walked slowly into the schoolhouse, unable to look around. Behind him he heard a confused sob, tears and a child’s voice trying to blubber through: “Something funny happened.”
If the child had been an adult it might have been warning enough. But the child had never experienced possession before, was not sure enough, was not clear enough. Chandler was clear into the schoolhouse before the remaining members of The Society of Slaves awoke to their danger. He heard a quick cry of They got him’. Then Chandler’s legs stopped walking and he addressed himself savagely. A few yards away a stout Chinese lady was mopping the tiles; she looked up at him, startled, but no more startled than Chandler was himself. “You idiot!”
Chandler blazed. “Why do you have to get mixed up in this? Don’t you know it’s wrong, love? Stay here!” Chandler commanded himself. “Don’t you dare leave this building!”
And he was free again, but there was a sudden burst of screams from outside.
Bewildered, Chandler stood for a moment, as little able to move as though the girl still had him under control.
Then he leaped through a classroom to a window, staring.
Outside in the playground there was wild confusion. Half the spectators were on the ground, trying to rise. As he watched, a teen-age boy buried himself at an elderly lady, the two of them falling. Another man flung himself to the ground. A woman swung her pocketbook into the face of the man next to her. One of the fallen ones rose, only to trip himself again. It was a mad spectacle, but Chandler understood it: What he was watching was a single member of the execs trying to keep a group of twenty ordinary, un-armed human beings in line. The exec was leaping from mind to mind; even so, the crowd was beginning to scatter.
Without thought Chandler started to leap out to help them; but the possessor had anticipated that. He was caught at the door. He whirled and ran toward the woman with the mop; as he was released, the woman flung herself upon him, knocking him down.
By the time he was able to get up again it was far too late to help… if there ever had been a time when he could have helped.
He heard shots. Two policemen had come running into the playground, guns drawn.
The exec who had looked at him out of the boy’s eyes, who had penetrated this nest of enemies and extricated Chandler from it, had taken first things first. Help had been summoned. Quick as the coronets worked, it was no time at all until the nearest persons with weapons were located, commandeered and in action.
Two minutes later there no longer was resistance.
Obviously more execs had come to help, attracted by the commotion perhaps, or summoned at some stolen moment after the meeting had first been invaded. There were only five survivors on the field. Each was clearly controlled. They rose and stood patiently while the two police shot them, shot them, paused to reload and shot again. The last to die was the bearded man, Linton, and as he fell his eyes brushed Chandler’s.
Chandler leaned against a wall.
It had been a terrible sight. The nearness of his own death had been almost the least of it. Far worse, far more damagingand how many times had it tortured him now?was the death of hope. For one moment there he had seen a vision of freedom again. Him on the island of Hilo, somehow magically gimmicking the controlling machine that gave the Executive Committee its power, here in Honolulu the Society of Slaves somehow magically using the hour of freedom he gave them to destroy their oppres-sors. …
But it was all gone now, and it would not come again.
His own escape was both miraculous and, very likely, only a temporary thing. He had no doubt of the identity of the exec who had interfered to save him … and had destroyed the others. Though he had heard the voice only as it came from his own mouth, he could not mistake it. It was Rosalie Pan.
He looked out at the red-headed man, sprawled across the foul line behind third base, and remembered what he said. There weren’t any good execs or bad execs. There were only execs.
XIII
WHATEVER CHANDLER’S life might be worth, he knew he had given it away and the girl had given it back to him.
He did not see her for several days, but the morning after the massacre he woke to find a note beside his bed table. No one had been in the room. It was his own sleeping hand that had written it, though the girl’s mind had moved his fingers:
If you get mixed up in anything like that again I won’t be able to help you. So don’t! Those people are just using you, you know. Don’t throw away your chances. Do you like surfboarding?
Rosie
But by then there was no time for surfboarding, or for anything else but work. The construction job on Hilo had begun, and it was a nightmare. He was flown to the island with the last load of parts. No execs were present in the flesh, but on the first day Chandler lost count of how many different minds possessed his own. He began to be able to recognize them by a limp as he walked, by tags of German as he spoke, by a stutter, a distinctive gesture of annoyance, an expletive. As he waS a trained engineer he was left to labor by himself for hours on end; it was worse for the others in the construction crew. There seemed to be a dozen execs hovering invisible around all the time; no sooner was a worker released by one than he was seized by another. The work progressed rapidly, but at the cost of utter exhaustion.
By the end of the fourth day Chandler had eaten only two meals and could not remember when he had slept last.
He found himself staggering when free and furious with the fatigue-clumsiness of his own body when possessed.
At sundown on the fourth day he found himself free for a moment and, incredibly, without work of his own to do just then, until someone else completed a job of patch-wiring. He stumbled out into the open air and had time only to gaze around for a moment before his eyes began to close. He had time to think that this must once have been a lovely island. Even unkempt as it was the trees were tall and beautiful; beyond them a wisp of smoke was pale against the dark-blue evening sky; the breeze was scent-ed… . He woke and found he was already back in the building, reaching for his soldering gun.
There came a point at which even the will of the execs was unable to drive the flogged bodies farther, and then they were pefmitted to sleep for a few hours. At daybreak they were awake again.
The sleep was not enough. The bodies were slow and inaccurate. Two of the Hawaiians, straining a hundred-pound component into place, staggered, slippedand dropped it.
Appalled, Chandler waited for them to kill themselves.
But it seemed that the execs were tiring too. One of the Hawaiians said irritably, with an accent Chandler did not recognize: “That’s pan. All right, you morons, you’ve won yourselves a vacation; we’ll have to fly you in replacements. Take the day off.” And incredibly all eleven of the haggard wrecks stumbling around the building were free at once.