‘Lots of ’em; but, being masochists, they’d probably drive you nuts. And you can’t stand “stupidity” – which, by definition, lets everybody out. Nope, it’s a tough order to fill.’
‘Check. She’d have to be strong enough and hard enough not to be afraid of me, by any trace. Able and eager to stand up to me and slug it out. To pin my ears back flat against my skull whenever she thinks I’m off the beam. Do it with skill and precision and nicety, with power and control, yet without doing herself any damage and without changing her basic feeling for me. In short, a female Jim James Nine.’
‘What? Good God – you think I’m like Belle Bellamy?’
‘Not by nine thousand megacycles. You’re like Belle could be and should be. Like I hope she will be. I’d have to give, too, of course – maybe we can make Christians out of each other. It’s quite a dream, I admit, but it’ll be Belle or nobody. But I’m not used to slopping over this way – let’s go.’
‘I’m glad you did, Clee – once in a lifetime is good for the soul. I’d say you were in love with her right now – except that if you were, you couldn’t possibly dissect her like a specimen on the table, the way you’ve just been doing. Are you or aren’t you?’
‘I’ll be damned if I know. You and Brownie believe that the poets’ concept of love is valid. In fact, you make a case for its validity. I’ve never believed in it, and don’t now … but under certain conditions … I simply don’t know. Ask me again some time; say in about a month?’
‘That’s the surest thing you know. Oh, brother I This is a thing I’m going to watch with my eyes out on stalks!’
For the next week, Belle locked her door every night. For another few nights, she did not lock it. Then, one night, she left it ajar. The following evening, the two again walked together to their doors.
T left my door open last night.’
‘I know you did.’
‘Well?’
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‘And have you scream to high heaven that I opened it? And put me on a tape for wilful inurbanity? For deliberate inter-sexual invasion of privacy?’
‘Blast and damn! You know perfectly well, Clee Garlock, I wouldn’t pull such a dirty, lousy trick as that.’
‘Maybe I should apologize, then, but as a matter of fact I have no idea whatever as to what you wouldn’t do.’ He stared at her, his face hard in thought. ‘As you probably know, I have had very little to do with women. That little has always been on a logical level. You are such a completely new experience that I can’t figure out what makes you tick.’
‘So you’re afraid of me,’ she said. ‘Is that it?”
‘Close enough.’
‘And I suppose it’s you that cartoonist what’s-his-name is using as a model for “Timorous Timmy”?’
‘Since you’ve guessed it, yes.’
‘You … weasel!’ She took three quick steps up the corridor, then back. ‘You say my logic is cockeyed. What system are you using now?’
‘I’m trying to develop one to match yours.’
‘Oh … I invited that one, I guess, since I know you aren’t afraid of God, man, woman, or devil … and you’re big enough that you don’t have to be proving it all the time.’ She laughed suddenly, her face softening markedly. ‘Listen, you big idiot – why don’t you ever knock me into an outside loop? If I were you and you were me, I’d’ve busted me loose from my front teeth long ago.’
‘Either I know better or I’m afraid to. Anyway, I’m not rocking any boat so far from shore.’
‘Says you. You’re wonderful, Clee – simply priceless. Do you know you’re the only man I ever met that I couldn’t make fall for me like a rock falling down a cliff? And that the falling is altogether too apt to be the other way?’
The first, I have suspected. The second is absolute nonsense.’
‘I hope it is … I wish I could be as certain of it as you are. You see, Clee, I really expected you to come in, last night, and there really wasn’t any bone in it. Surely you don’t think I’m going to invite you into my room, do you?’
‘I can’t see why not. However, since no valid system of logic
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seems to apply, I accept your decision as a fact. By the same reasoning – however invalid – if I ask you again you will again refuse. So all that’s left, I guess, is for me to drag you into my room by force.”
He put his left arm around her and applied a tiny pressure against her side – under which she began to move slowly toward his door.
‘You admit that you’re using force?’ she asked. Her face was unreadable; her mental block was at its fullest force. ‘That I’m being coerced?’
‘Definitely,’ he agreed. ‘At least ten dynes of sheer brute force. Not enough to affect a tape, but enough, I hope, to affect you. If it isn’t, I’ll use more.’
‘Oh, ten dynes is enough. Just so it’s force.’
She raised her face toward his and threw both arms around his neck, and Cleander Garlock forgot all about dynes and tapes.
After a time she disengaged one arm, reached out and opened his door. He gathered her up and carried her over the threshold.
A few jumps later they met their first really old Arpalone. This Inspector was so old that his skin, instead of the usual bright, clear cobalt blue, was dull and tending toward grey. The old fellow was strangely garrulous, for a Guardian; he wanted them to pause awhile and gossip.
‘Yes, I am lonesome,’ he admitted. ‘It has been a long time since I exchanged thoughts with anyone. You see, nobody has visited this planet – Groobe, its name is – since almost all our humanity was killed, a few periods ago…’
‘Killed?’ Garlock asked sharply. ‘How? Not Dilipic?’
‘Oh, you have seen them? I never have, myself. No, nothing nearly that bad. Merely the Ozobes. The world itself was scarcely harmed at all. Rehabilitation will be a simple matter, so there’s no real reason why some of those Engineers …’
‘The beast!’ Lola shot a tight-beam thought at her husband. ‘Who cares anything about the rock and dirt of a planet! It’s the people that count and his are dead and he’s perfectly complaisant about it – just lonesome!’
‘Don’t let it throw you, pet,’ James soothed. ‘He’s an Arpa-
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lone, you know, not a sociological anthropologist’
‘… shouldn’t come out here and spend a few hours once in a while, but they don’t. Too busy with- their own business, they say. But while you are physically human, mentally you are not. You’re all too … too … I can’t put my thought exactly on it, but… more as though you were human fighters, if such a thing could be possible.’
‘We are fighters. Where we come from, most human beings are fighters.’
‘Oh? I never heard of such a thing. Where can you be from?’
This took much explanation, since the Arpalone had never heard of intergalactic travel. ‘You are willing, then to fight side by side with us Arpalones against the enemies of humanity? You have actually done so, at times, and won?’
‘We certainly have.’
T am glad. I am expecting a call for help any time now. Will you please give me enough of your mental pattern, Doctor Garlock, so that I can call you in case of need? Thank you.’
‘What makes you think you’re going to get an S.O.S. so soon? Where from?’
‘These Ozobe invasions come in cycles, years apart, but there are always several planets attacked at very nearly the same time. We were the first, this time – so there will be one or two others very shortly.’
‘Do they always … kill all the people?’ Lola asked.
‘Oh no. Scarcely half of the time. Depends on how many fighters the planet has, and how much outside help can get there soon enough.’
‘Your call could come from any of the other solar systems in this neighborhood, then?’ Garlock asked.
‘Yes. There are fifteen inhabited planets within about six light-years of us, and we form a close-knit group.’
‘What are these Ozobes?’
‘Animals. Warm-blooded, but egg-layers, not mammals. Like this—’ The Inspector spread in their minds a picture of a creature somewhat like the flying tigers of Hodell, except that the color was black, shading off to iridescent green at the extremities. Also, it was armed with a short and heavy, but very sharp, sting.
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‘They say that they come from space, but I don’t believe it,’ the old fellow went on. ‘What would a warm-blood be doing out in space? Besides, they couldn’t find anybody to lay their eggs in out there. No, I think they live right here on Groobe somewhere, maybe holed up in caves or something for ten or thirteen years … but that wouldn’t make sense, either, would it? I just don’t know…’