She shook her head. “Not if murder is in the intention. Because it was only trying to frighten Buchele off. It’s the way they deal with another mind that is annoying them.”
“Frighten him off?” Duffold repeated incredulously.
“Look,” Pilch said, “every time you felt that anxiety you mentioned, you’d been jolted by some Palayatan in exactly the same way. Every human being, every intelligent life-form we know about, keeps that stuff out of awareness by layers and layers of mental padding. Our heavy-duty civilized emotions are just trickles of the real thing. It takes the kind of power equipment we have on the ship to drive ourselves down consciously, with full awareness, to the point where we’re close enough to it that a Palayatan could topple us in. So it can’t ever happen on the planet.”
Duffold looked like a man who has suddenly come upon a particularly distasteful notion.
“Some people reported euphorias,” he said.
Pilch nodded. “I didn’t mention that because I knew you wouldn’t care for it. Well, I told you they’ve been regarding us as some sort of small strange animal. Some of them become quite fond of the little beasts. So they stimulate us pleasantly—till we take a nip out of them or whatever it is we do that annoys them. Tell me something,” she went on before he could reply. “Just before you blacked out during the investigation, what were the sensations you hit—terror, self-disgust, rage?”
He looked at her carefully. “Well—all of that,” he said. “The outstanding feeling was that I was in close contact with something incredibly greedy, devouring . . . foul! I can appreciate Buchele’s attitude.” He hesitated. “How did it happen that I wasn’t aware of what got Buchele?”
“Automatic switch-off for the instant it lasted. It was obvious that it was going over the level of emotional tolerance that had been set for you. We told you there’d be safeguards.”
“I see,” said Duffold. “Then what about the other thing?”
Pilch looked faintly surprised. “Wintan would have cut you out of it, if he’d had the time,” she said. “But obviously you did tolerate it even if you blacked out for a while. That was still well within the safe limit.”
Duffold felt a slow stirring of rage. “When you took Buchele’s place, it seemed to me that the Palayatan struck at you in the same way he had at Buchele. Is that correct?”
Pilch nodded. “It is.”
“But because of your superior conditioning, it didn’t disturb you?”
“Not enough to keep me from making use of it,” Pilch said.
“In what way?”
“I opened it up on the Palayatan. That,” said Pilch, “was when he yelled for help. But it was too bad you picked it up!”
Duffold carefully traced a large, even circle on the desk top with a fingertip. “And you could accept that as being part of your mind?” he said with a note of mild wonder. “Well, I suppose you should be congratulated on such an unusual ability.”
She looked a little pale as she walked out of the office. But, somehow, Duffold couldn’t find any real satisfaction in that.
* * *
Wintan was leaning against the side of the central Outpost building as Pilch came out of the entrance. She stopped short.
“Thought you’d be at the transport,” she said.
“I was,” Wintan said. “Twelve slightly stunned keffs in good shape have been loaded, and I was making a last tour of the area.”
“Albemarl?” she asked as they started walking back to the ramps. “Or the psychologist?”
“Both,” Wintan said. “I’d have liked to say good-by to Albemarl, but there’s still no trace of the old tramp anywhere. He’d have enjoyed the keff hunt, too! Too bad he had to wander off again.”
“How about the other one?”
“Well, there’s very little chance he’ll actually contact us, of course,” Wintan said. “However”—he held his right hand up—”observe the new wrist adornment! If he’s serious about it, that’s to help him locate me.”
She looked at two polished black buttons set into a metal wrist-strap. “What’s it supposed to do?”
“Theoretically, it sets up a small spot of static on their awareness band. Tech hasn’t had a chance to test it, of course, but it seems to be working. I’ve been getting some vaguely puzzled looks from our local friends as I wander about, but that’s as much interest as they’ve shown. How did it go with his Excellency?”
“Satisfactorily, I suppose,” Pilch said grudgingly. “No heavy dramatics. But for a while there, you know, that little man had me feeling mighty unclean!”
“Self-defense,” Wintan said tolerantly. “Give him time to shake it down. Basically, he already knows it was one of his own little emotional volcanoes he dropped into, not yours. But it’ll be a year or two before he’s really able to admit it to himself, and meanwhile he can let off steam by sitting around and loathing you thoroughly from time to time.”
“I read the Predictor’s report on him, too,” Pilch said. “I still don’t agree it was the right way to handle it.”
Wintan shrugged. “Cabon can estimate them. If we’d jolted this one much heavier, it might have broken him up. But if the jolt had been a little too light, he could have buried it permanently away and forgotten about it again. As it is, he knows what’s inside him, and eventually he’ll know it consciously. When he does, he’ll be ready for Service work without qualifications—and that means he won’t go out some day like Buchele did.”
They walked on in silence for a while, through the drifting crowds of visiting Palayatans. Assorted Hub perfumes tinged the air, soft voices chattered amiably, faces turned curiously after the passing humans. “What makes you all so sure Duffold will be back?” Pilch said finally. “Even if he realizes what happened, the rap on the nose he got could be discouraging.”
“It could be, for someone else,” Wintan said. “But there’re some you can’t keep away, once they learn where the biggest job really is. For his Excellency, the rap on the nose will turn out eventually to have been Stage One of conditioning.”
“Well, maybe. But an idealist like that,” said Pilch, “always strikes me as peculiar! They never want to look at the notion that the real reason Man rates some slight cosmic approval is that he can act as well as he does, in spite of the stuff he’s evolving from.”
“Can’t really blame them,” Wintan remarked. “As you probably discovered in your own conditioning, some of that stuff just isn’t good to look at.”
“Now there for once,” Pilch agreed darkly, “you spoke a fair-sized truth. Incidentally, that static you’re spreading doesn’t seem to meet with everyone’s approval around here. I’ve been jolted three times in the last ten seconds.”
“Small boy about six steps behind us,” Wintan reported. “He’s scowling ferociously—but mama’s leading him off now. I wonder what he made of it consciously?”
“He’ll probably grow up with a vague but firmly held notion that Hub humans don’t smell good,” Pilch estimated. They were coming up to a long, low wall from which the ramp-ways led into the sunken take-off section. The crowds were thinning out. “Have you noticed anyone acting as if he might conceivably be our psychologist?”
Wintan said he hadn’t. “If he’s in the area, as he said he would be, he’s still got about ten minutes to make up his mind to go space-faring. Let’s stop here and give him a last chance to show up before we go out on the ramp.”
They leaned back against the wall surveying passing natives hopefully. “He was excited about the idea at first,” Wintan said, “but I imagine it seemed like too big a change when he’d had time to think about it. After all, he would have lost contact with all his kind before the ship was out of the system.”
Pilch shivered. “Like a man living in a solitary dream for years, listening to the voices of strange entities. Isn’t it odd—two intelligent races, physically side by side, but each blocked from any real contact with the other by the fears of its own mind!”
“It needn’t have stayed that way,” Wintan said regretfully. “Lord, the things we could have learned! We working down towards his awareness band, and he working up towards ours. Wish we had time to experiment here for a year or so! But the Great God Schedule has got us. It’s likely to be a half century before the Service can spare another look at Palayata.”
Pilch glanced at her timepiece. “The same Schedule also says we start moving towards Ramp Thirteen right now, Wintan.”
They moved, reluctantly. As they came up the stairs to the locked platform gate, a lanky figure that had been sitting beside it stood up without unseemly haste.
Pilch darted a wild glance at Wintan. “Great Suns!” she said as they both came to a stop. Wintan was clearing his throat. “Ah, Albemarl—” His voice sounded shaky. “I greet you!”