Once more, Burton paused.
“Except for one small item! This was a very tiny black sphere! The doctor had found it on the surface of Spruce’s forebrain. It was attached to the cerebral nerves by extremely thin wires. This led us to conclude that Spruce had literally thought, or wished, himself to die.
“Somehow, the sphere interacted with his mental processes in such a manner that he could think himself dead. Perhaps he thought of a certain code sequence, and this released a poison into his system. The doctor could find no evidence of this, but then he lacked the necessary chemical means to make an accurate analysis.
“In any event, Spruce’s body showed no damage. Something had stopped his heart, but the doctor did not know what that was.”
A woman said, “Then there could be such people among us? Now, here, in this group?”
Burton nodded, and everybody started talking at once. After fifteen minutes of this babel, he stood up and indicated to his crew that it was time to go to bed. On the way to the cutter, Kazz drew him aside.
“Burton-naq, when you mentioned you and Monat were hypnotists . . . well, that made me think about something. I’ve never thought about it before . .. maybe there’s nothing funny about it… only . . .”
“Well?”
“It’s nothing, I’m sure. Only it was funny. You see, I told Spruce I could see he didn’t have no sign on his head. He left a few minutes later, but I could smell the fear in his sweat. There were others there, all eating breakfast, Targoff, Doctor Steinborg, Monat, Pete, and a number of others. Targoff said we should convene the council, though this was some time after Spruce had taken off. Monat and Pete agreed. But they said they wanted to question me a little more. You know, what the marks looked like. Were they all alike or did they differ?”
“I said they differed. A lot of them were. . . what you say? . . . similar, yes, that’s it. But each one . .. what the hell, you know what they look like, I’ve drawn pictures of them for you.”
Burton said, “Aside from some looking something like Chinese ideograms, they resemble nothing I’ve ever seen. My guess is that they’re symbols of a numbering system.”
“Yeah, I know what you said. The thing is, Monat and Frigate took me aside before we went to your place to tell you what’d happened. In fact, we went to Monat’s hut.”
Kazz paused. Impatiently Burton said, “Well?”
“I’m trying to remember. But I can’t. I went into the hut, and that’s all!”
“What do you mean, that’s all?”
“Burton-naq, I mean that’s all. I don’t remember a thing about going into that hut. I remember starting through the door. The next I remember is walking with Monat, Pete, and the other councillors to your hut!”
Burton felt a slight shock, yet he had no idea what had caused it.
“You mean that you don’t remember anything from the time you entered until the time you walked out?”
“I mean that I don’t remember walking out. All of a sudden, there I was, a hundred paces from Monat’s house and walking along, talking to Monat.”
Burton frowned. Alice and Besst were standing on the dock, looking back as if wondering why they had dropped behind.
“This is most peculiar, Kazz. Why haven’t you told me about this before? After all, it’s been many years since it happened. Didn’t you think about this before?”
“No, I didn’t. Ain’t that funny? Not one frigging thought. I still wouldn’t remember even entering the hut if Loghu hadn’t said something about it the other day. She saw me go in, but she wasn’t with the group that day and so didn’t know what was going on until later.
“What happened was that she was standing in the doorway of her and Frigate’s hut. Frigate, Monat, and me was going to go into Frigate’s hut. When they found she was there, they went to Monat’s. It was just by chance that she mentioned this yesterday. We was talking about when we was grail slaves, and this brought up Spruce. That’s when she asked me what Monat, Pete, and me was talking about. She said she wondered sometimes why they wanted to talk to me in private.