Part 9 (1/2)

”Nothing will change.”

She sobbed. ”I'm going to seem to you like a native woman of three hundred years ago who is married to a white man on a South Sea Island--and then white women begin arriving on the island.”

The wildness of her fantasying astounded Cemp. ”It's not the same,” he said. ”I promise complete loyalty and devotion for the rest of our lives.”

”n.o.body can promise anything in personal relations,” she said. But his words seemed to rea.s.sure her after a moment. She dried her eyes and came over to him and allowed herself to be kissed.

It was an hour before a phone call came from Charley Baxter. The man was apologetic for the delay but explained that it was the result of a conference on Cemp's future actions.

”It was a discussion just about you in all this,” Baxter said.

Cemp waited.

The final decision was to continue to not let Cemp intermingle with, other Silkies--”for reasons that you know,” Baxter said significantly.

Cemp surmised that the reference was to the secret knowledge he had gained from the Kibmadine Di-isarinn and that this meant they would continue to send him on special missions that kept him away from other Silkies.

Baxter now produced the information that only four hundred Silkies had been approached by alter egos. ”The number actually reported in,” he said, ”is three hundred and ninety-six.”

Cemp was vaguely relieved, vaguely contemptuous. U-Brem's claim that all Silkies were targets was now proved to be propaganda. He had already shown himself to be an inept Silkie. The lie added one more degrading touch.

”Some of them were pretty poor duplicates,” said Baxter. ”Apparently, mimicking another body is not a great skill with them.”

However, he admitted, even four hundred was more than enough to establish the existence of a hitherto unknown group of Silkies.

”Even if they are untrained,” he said, ”we've absolutely got to find out who they are and where they come from.”

”Is there no clue?” Cemp asked.

No more than he already knew.

”They all got away?” Cemp said, astounded. ”No one did any better than I did?”

”On the average, not as well,” said Baxter.

It seemed that most Silkies had made no effort to hold the strange Silkies who confronted them; they had simply reported in and asked for instructions.

”Can't blame them,” said Baxter.

He continued, ”But I might as well tell you that your fight and your reasons for fighting make you one of the two dozen Silkies we feel we can depend on in this matter. So here are your instructions ...”

He talked for several minutes and concluded, ”Take Joanne with you, but go at once!”

The sign said, ALL THE MUSIC IN THIS BUILDING IS SILKIE MUSIC.

Cemp, who had never listened for long to any other kind, saw the faint distaste come into his wife's face. She caught his look and evidently his thought, for she said, ”All right, so it sounds dead level to me, as if it's all the same note--well, anyway, the same few notes, close together, repeated in various sickening combinations.”

She stopped, shook-her beautiful blonde head, and said, ”I guess I'm tense and afraid and need something wild and clashy.”

To Cemp, who could hear harmonies in the music that were beyond the reach of ordinary human ears, her outburst was but a part of the severe emotional reactions to things that Silkies married to human women had to become accustomed to. The wives of Silkies had a hard time making their peace with the realities of the relations.h.i.+p.

As Joanne had put it more than once, ”There you are with this physically perfect, beautiful male. But all the time you're thinking, ”This is not really a man. It's a monster that can change in a flash into either a fishlike being or a creature of s.p.a.ce. But of course, I wouldn't part with him for anything.”

The music sign was soon behind them, and they walked on into the interior of the museum. Their destination was the original laboratory, in which the first Silkie was supposed to have been produced. The lab occupied the center of the building; it had been moved there from the West Indies a hundred and ten years before, according to a date on a wall plaque at the entrance.

It had seemed to Baxter that a sharper study should be made of the artifacts of Silkie history. The entire structure of that history was now being questioned for the very first time.

This task, of reevaluating the past data, had been a.s.signed to Cemp and Joanne.

The lab was brightly lighted. It had only one visitor; a rather plain young woman with jet-black hair but no makeup, wearing ill-fitting clothes, was standing at one of the tables beside the far doorway.

As Cemp came in, a thought not his own touched his mind. He started to turn to Joanne, taking it for granted that she had communicated with him on that level. He took it for granted, that is, for several seconds.

Belatedly, realization came that the thought had arrived on a magnetic carrier wave--Silkie level.

Cemp swung around and stared at the black-haired woman. She smiled at him, somewhat tensely, he noted, and then her thought came, unmistakably: ”Please don't give me away. I was stationed here to convince any doubting Silkie.”

She didn't have to explain what she meant. The thunder of it was pouring through Cemp's mind.

According to his knowledge, there had never been any female Silkies. All Silkies on Earth were males, married to women of the Special People--like Joanne.

But this black-haired, farm-woman type was a female Silkie! That was what she was letting him know by her presence. In effect, by being here, she was saying, ”Don't bother to search dusty old files. I'm living proof that Silkies were not produced in somebody's laboratory two hundred and thirty years ago.”

Suddenly Cemp was confused. He was aware that Joanne had come up beside him, that she must have caught his thought, that she was herself dismayed. The one glimpse he had of her face showed that she had become very pale.

”Nat!” her voice came sharply. ”You've got to capture her!”

Cemp started forward, but it was a half-hearted movement. Yet in spite of the uncertainty in his actions, he was already having logical thoughts.

Since only hours had gone by since the moment he first saw U-Brem, she must have been stationed here in advance. She would therefore have had no contact with the others. And so she wouldn't know that to a trained Silkie like himself, she was as vulnerable as an unarmed civilian opposed by a soldier.

The black-haired woman must have suddenly had some doubt of her own. Abruptly she stepped through the door near which she had been-standing and closed it after her.

”Nat!” Joanne's voice, high-pitched, sounded mere inches behind him. ”You can't let her get away!”

Cemp, who had emerged from his brief stasis, projected a thought after the female Silkie. ”I'm not going to fight you, but I'm going to stay close to you until I have all the information we want.”

”Too late!” A magnetic carrier wave, human-Silkie level, brought her thought. ”You're already too late.”

Cemp didn't think so. He arrived at the door through which she had disappeared, was slightly disconcerted to find that it was locked, smashed it with a single jagged lightning thrust of electrical force, stepped through its smoking remains--and saw the woman in the act of entering a gap in the wall made by a sliding door.

She was not more than three dozen feet away, and she had half-turned to look back in his direction. What she saw was evidently a surprise, for a startled look came into her face.

Hastily, her hand came up to something inside the aperture, and the door slid shut. As it closed, Cemp, who was running toward it, had a glimpse of a gleaming corridor beyond. The existence of such a secret pa.s.sageway had too many implications for Cemp to consider immediately.

He was at the wall, fumbling for the hidden door. When he could not find it after several long moments, he stepped back and burned it down with the two energy flows from his brain, which, when they came together outside his body, created an intense electrical arc. It was the only energy weapon available to him as a human being, but it was enough.