“I am Monroe-Alpha Clifford.”
“‘Monroe-Alpha,'” she mused. “That’s a good line, Clifford. I suppose you — ” She got no further with her remark; her expression was suddenly surprised; she made two gasping quick intakes of breath, buried her face in her hands, and sneezed convulsively.
Monroe-Alpha sat up abruptly, at once alert and no longer happy. She? Impossible!
But he faced the first test of his new-found resolution firmly. It was going to be damned unpleasant, he realized, but he had to do it. The Whole is greater than the parts.
He even derived unadmitted melancholy satisfaction from the realization that he could do his duty, no matter how painful. “You sneezed,” he said accusingly.
“It was nothing,” she said hastily. “Dust-dust and the sunshine.”
“Your voice is thick. Your nose is stopped up. Tell me the truth. You’re a ‘natural’ — aren’t you?”
“You don’t understand,” she protested. “I’m a-oh, dear!” She sneezed twice in rapid succession, then left her head bowed.
Monroe-Alpha bit his lip. “I hate this as much as you do,” he said, “but I’m bound to assume that you are a control natural until you prove the contrary.”
“Why?”
“I tried to explain to you yesterday. I’ve got to take you in to the Provisional Committee-what I was talking about is already an established fact.”
She did not answer him. She just looked. It made him still more uncomfortable. “Come now,” he said. “No need to be tragic about it. You won’t have to enter the stasis. A simple, painless operation that leaves you unchanged-no disturbance of your endocrine balance at all. Besides, there may be no need for it. Let me see your tattoo.”
Still she did not answer. He drew his gun and levelled it at her. “Don’t trifle with me. I mean it.” He lowered his sights and pinged the floor just in front of her. She flinched back from the burnt wood and the little puff of smoke. “If you force me, I’ll burn you. I’m not joking. Let me see your tattoo.”
When still she made no move, he got up, went to her, grabbed her roughly by the arm, dragging her to her feet. “Let’s see your tattoo.”
She hesitated, then shrugged her shoulders. “All right…but you’ll be sorry.” She lifted her left arm. As he lowered his head to read the figures tattooed near the arm pit she brought her hand down sharply near the wrist joint of his right hand. At the same instant her right fist made a painful surprise in the pit of his stomach.
He dropped his gun.
He dived after the gun before it had clattered to a stop and was up after her. But she was already gone. The cabin door stood open, framing a picture of sugar pines and redwoods, but no human figure. A bluejay cursed and made a flicker of blue; nothing else moved.
Monroe-Alpha leaped to the door and looked both ways, covering the same arc with his weapon, but the Giant Forest had swallowed her. She was somewhere close at hand, of course; her flight had disturbed the jay. But where? Behind which of fifty trees? Had there been snow on the ground he would have known, but the snow had vanished, except for bedraggled hollows, and the pine needles carpet of an evergreen forest left no tracks perceptible to his untrained eye-nor was it cluttered with undergrowth to impede and disclose her flight.
He cast around uncertainly like a puzzled hound. He caught a movement from the corner of his eye, turned, saw a flash of white, and fired instantly.
He had hit-that was sure. His target had fallen behind a baby pine which blocked his view, thrashed once, and was quiet. He went toward the little tree with reluctant steps, intending to finish her off mercifully, if, by chance, his first bolt had merely mutilated her.
It was not she, but a mule deer fawn. His charge had burnt away half the rump and penetrated far up into the vitals. The movement he had seen and heard could have been no more than dying reflex. Its eyes were wide open, deer soft, and seemed to him to be filled with gentle reproach. He turned away at once, feeling a little sick. It was the first non-human animal he had ever killed.