Forbin stared avidly, as if he could never see enough of these unearthly black forms. Were they rotating? Waiting, he prayed anew.
Chapter III
FOR A LONG time nothing happened: leaves fell in the dying breeze, ignited on the cracking stones, flared, and vanished. Forbin could hear Blake’s heavy breathing and the distant cry of gulls. The men caught something of the aliens’ immobility and were still, awaiting the final revelation.
Then a voice, not from the radio, seemingly from nowhere.
“We greet you, Forbin. Do not be afraid.”
In a day of shattering amazements, the voice was not the least.
By birth a Virginian, and very much a citizen of the USNA, Forbin had a strong attachment, a deep affection, for England, Once great, mistress of the seas, she had not been brought down by conquest; tired, a vision gone, she had turned her back on the world, dropped out. Unlike the rest of Europe she had not moved into the twenty-second century; she lacked most of the advantages - and disadvantages - of the modern world, and Forbin loved her with the quiet intensity only a foreigner can have. Alexander the Great was a Macedonian, not a Greek; Napoleon, Corsican; Hitler, Austrian not German; and Stalin was a Georgian outlander.
“We greet you, Forbin. Do not be afraid.”
The vaguely Bostonian accent of the Martian radio transmissions had gone, replaced by the warm burr of Devon, land of Drake, who planted the English flag in California forty years before the Pilgrim Fathers left Plymouth, Devon. Devon - a county of maddening, twisting lanes, thatched cottages, thick cream, and powerful cider - Forbin’s favorite.
At last he found his voice. “Yes, I am Forbin.” He was conscious of Blake, bug-eyed, beside him. “This is my chief assistant, Dr. Blake.”
“We know Dr. Blake.”
Forbin felt like Alice in Wonderland, solemnly making introductions - to what? Blake made as if to speak, but changed his mind.
” Yes,” said Forbin, unable to think of anything to say.
“In three minutes our temperature will be down to thirty-seven degrees Celsius. Let us then go where you may rest.”
Of all possible statements from travelers fresh in from a sixty-million-kilometer journey, this struck Forbin as the most improbable. Certainly they were not hostile - not yet. Had Colossus been wrong?
“Yes,” he said again, “er, you will appreciate that we are, um, under some strain. If you agree, we will wait for you in there.” He indicated the French windows. He had to talk with Blake, agree upon a general line.
“We understand.”
Blake practically fell on the sofa, mopping his face. Forbin poured more brandies.
“Goddammit!” Blake waved his arms helplessly. “Where do we start? I mean, when, and what, gets outa the spheres? Reckon they’re breaking it gently, with all this formal stuff. …” His mind fastened on something else. “And this ‘we’ bit, with only one voice - and that could be coming from any damned place - and the accent, that really shook me!”
Forbin nodded in agreement.’ ‘They must have watched an awful lot of TV to get it that perfect.”
“Still, it’s a smart idea. Certainly made me feel at home and a lot less scared. Took me right back to good old Wyoming!”
Forbin froze, his face hard. “What d’you mean, Wyoming?”
Blake looked startled. “What I say! I know Wyoming when I hear it. Hell, I was raised there!”
“Quick, Blake, we haven’t much time. Are you sure!”
“Sure I’m sure. Aren’t you?”
“No. I-” He stopped.
To human eyes there was no sense of motion: they did
not appear to glide, float, or roll; one instant in one spot, the next that much closer. Two meters from Forbin they stopped, hovering at his eye level.
He stood up. Instantly they rose with him. The action struck him as ridiculous; he had a strong desire to laugh, and knew that if he did, the end would be hysteria.
“You find our action ridiculous?”
Forbin’s tumbler shattered on the carpet. He swayed. Blake grabbed him.
“You - you read my thoughts!”
“You did not speak?”
“No!” shouted Forbin. “No!”
“Then it is evident that at short range we can read your thoughts.”
“This is impossible!” Forbin was near the end of his road. “I - we - cannot communicate with you. Impossible!”
Blake tightened his grip on his chief’s arm. “Take it easy, Charles,” he said, breathing brandy fumes over Forbin.
His chief shook himself free. “I ask that you move out of range.”
“We agree. We see the confusion in your minds. You are less simple structures than predicted.”
Instantly, their movement too fast for human eyes, they were at the far end of the long room.
“Think now. We will tell you when we read you.”
Forbin fought to keep his exhausted mind under control; he wanted to run, run anywhere, away. He took a deep breath. Think … think what? His eyes shut, he counted mentally, forcing an image of each numeral before his inner eye. One, two, three …
“We have a faint image of the figure six.”
He opened his eyes; they were three meters away.’ ‘No closer, please-not if we are to have any meaningful communication.”
At once they were one meter further back. “Try again.”
He did so, feeling calmer, immensely relieved at their cooperation.
“We receive nothing.”
Forbin nodded thankfully; at least they had reasoning powers akin to humans.
Blake felt thankful too, but less trusting. Suppose they were fooling? Immediately he feared the consequences of that thought, but nothing happened; he gave up and just trusted. Encouraged by the Martian attitude and, in his view, poor old Forbin’s inability to handle the bastards, he took over.
“One leetle point - this is your first time in our environment. Could be you don’t know it all. Okay, so you know if our atmosphere will suit you, but how about the effect of yours on us, when you open up?”
His chief was by no means as far gone as Blake thought; he frowned at his assistant’s manner, but said nothing, still wrestling with an earlier problem. If they could speak simultaneously in two different dialects - it could not be only a question of accents - they could probably speak totally different languages at the same time … and this mind-reading: that was another unnerving surprise. The Martian reply to Blake drove these thoughts right out of his head.
“Blake, we have considered these factors. You saw we did not enter this room until our temperature had fallen to a safe, human level. Do not be alarmed. As to our appearance, for you we are as we are. The sphere is a convenient shape, a form familiar to humans.”
Blake grunted, foggily trying to absorb the idea he was looking at real Martians, not at their spacecraft.
Forbin found even more food for thought in their answer. That ‘we are as we are’ was a clear statement: they did not intend to show their Martian form. That was comforting - and disturbing.
But Blake, who had not dropped his half-pint of brandy on the floor, felt bolder, his language slangier. Eager to vent his pent-up bitterness, he said, “That’s your privilege, but for us it’s kinda weird, talking to a coupla balls!”
Forbin winced at Blake’s truculence and fervently hoped the Martians did not understand the stress Blake had placed on the last word.
“We see your difficulty. There is a solution, but it may pose fresh difficulties for you.”
Crossing to the sideboard, Forbin was fortunate enough to be passing an armchair, and grabbed the back in time.
Where the Martians had been stood another Forbin, another Blake.
The men goggled at their other selves. The Martian versions stood casually, “Blake” with his hands in his pockets, “Forbin” fiddling nervously with his wedding ring, typical mannerisms of the originals.
Curiosity gradually overcame shock; Blake even went closer to check the evidence of his eyes. The figures appeared solid, not projections. “Blake” took out a cigar.
If I smell that cigar, thought Forbin, I’ll go right out of my mind. He stared at the counterparts’ faces, relaxed, noncommittal. “Blake” was feeling his pockets for matches. Forbin had had enough.
“No! No - please!”
Instantly the black balls were back.
“Bastards!” said Blake softly, rocking slowly on his heels. The Martian reversion appeared in his fuddled brain as some sort of victory.
Not much steadier, but for different reasons, Forbin poured the remains of the decanter into a glass. There was only enough for one, and he knew who was going to have it. He drank, facing the aliens.
“Please, don’t do that again. You are right; it is best we meet this way.” The spheres were like two gigantic black, blind eyes - blind, yet seeing. He finished his drink in a gulp, frantic to take the edge off his screaming nerves.
Every question asked only produced an answer which raised even more questions, and they seemed even harder to resolve. Blake’s favorite stance was like that, but he certainly hadn’t used it in front of the Martians - and did he finger his ring like that? Had he, since the alien arrival? He doubted it.
Inferences piled up like bills at New Year, and not a single one was comforting.
“Martians.” The hardness of his manner did not mirror his emotions; he had no other way of controlling his voice.
“Your knowledge and power is far beyond us. We cannot grasp your nature. We are in your hands.”
Blake gave a deep-throated growl.
“For you, Forbin, we have some understanding, less for Blake. He must speedily rid himself of his visions of crude violence.”
Instinctively Blake stepped back, swaying gently. He shouted; the words were unclear, but not his attitude.
Forbin got as far as opening his mouth.
“So be it,” said the Martian voice dispassionately.
Blake shot backwards as if bouncing off an invisible wall. He screamed, his balled fists shaking before his closed eyes. Again and again he screamed.
Forbin tried to cry out, to move, but the fearful high-pitched sound tore into his brain, stark terror had him by the throat.
Blake swung, beating the air, fighting phantoms. A scream died in his mouth, his knees gave, and he crumpled to the floor, a boneless figure.
Child-eyed, Forbin stared, his brain useless, refusing to accept what he saw, paralyzed by the mental echo of Blake’s screams.
The Martian voice broke the deafening silence. “He will recover.”
“What have you done!” Forbin’s voice was squeaky with strain.
“He will recover. That was only a warning.”
His body began to obey his brain; he moved slowly towards Blake. For all his brilliance, perhaps because of it, Forbin was not a practical man. He fumbled clumsily. Blake was far too heavy to lift.
“Leave him, Forbin. Do not fear, he will recover.”
The only prop for his sanity was the belief that, just as he had never known Colossus to lie, the same was true of the Martians; deceit and lies, he hoped, were human specialties. He sank into an armchair, burying his face in his hands.
Would this nightmare never end? His chaotic thoughts went back to its beginning, the shocking revelation that his wife was a top member of the Fellowship, caught by Colossus, imprisoned by the Sect, lost to him … Was it her fault - or his - or Blake’s - or Colossus’s?
Briefly he wallowed in self-pity, forgetful of the Martians. To be clear of it all, a humble, unthinking worker somewhere, anywhere - anywhere but here …
The intercom hummed melodiously, a sugary sound out of phase with the situation or his thoughts, dragging him back. The sound went on and on. Wearily he got up, stumbled over Blake’s legs; ignoring the Martians, he crossed to the panel.
“Yes?” It was the voice of a very old man.
The 3-D screen showed the anxious face of his chief secretary, Angela.
“I’m sorry, Director, but I have to speak with you. The UN Sec-Gen keeps trying to contact you.” She sounded desperate. ‘ ‘I keep telling him you’re busy, but he says it’s vital.”
Forbin was silent, trying to reorient his mind to yet another facet of the world disaster. He had difficulty with the initials UN.
“Chief!” She called again, her face lined. “Chief!”
He pressed the audio button only. “I hear.”
“Are you all right, Chief?”
Somehow he found the strength. “I’m still here.” He goaded his brain into action.’ ‘Tell the Secretary-General I understand his problems. He must do all he can to - er - maintain normality. I will be in touch with him as soon as I can.”
“But Chief, he says the UN has been bombarded by a War Game Fleet which demanded their surrender. They did that, but the Fleet’s still there, guns pointing at them!”
“Tell him what I have said. I know the problems.” He snapped the picture off.
The War Game Fleets … God! He’d forgotten all about them - and Blake’s crazy bid for power. … So much had happened, an endless succession of waves of events, each obliterating the one before.
With war abolished, Colossus had invented the War Game as an outlet for man’s urge for conquest, power, and destruction. All States of all Unions had been permitted to build a Fleet, nuclear-powered, remote-controlled, and to the designs current one hundred fifty years earlier, the end of the gun era. Fleet had fought Fleet in ocean battles, watched eagerly by hundreds of millions on satellite TV, the ultimate victor rising from its Inter-State League, through Continental to World League, and Colossus had been umpire and final arbiter in all Games.
The Fellowship had lost out to the Sect in many ways; the World Police had been firmly Sectarian, but the rebels had secretly gained control of many of the Fleets. The Sect had suspected this, but in a world ruled by Colossus the all-powerful, what did that matter?
There they had been in error. Under the New Order there were no weapons between the Master’s missiles and the simple handguns of the Police, the one for the large-scale revolt, the other for the madman who tried to get out of line. Nothing else was required; the Fleets, archaic in design, were toys.
While the Master ruled this had been true - but then the unthinkable had occurred. Colossus had fallen, values had changed within the hour, and the Fleets had become the most powerful weapons on earth.