The Ganymede Takeover

VIII

Robots lifted Joan gently from the pool and laid her with infinite care on a table nearby. Removing her helmet Balkani said, “Hello, Miss Hiashi.” “Hello, Doctor.” Her voice echoed as if far away and he recognized the sound; after the therapy this often came about, this dreamlike aspect of speech and mentation.

“Looks like she’s in a trance,” Ringdahl said pro­saically. “Let me see if she will react to a direct command.”

“If you must, go ahead,” Balkani said with irrita­tion; he felt irked that his unprofessional military superior had intervened at this crucial stage.

“Miss Hiashi,” Ringdahl said, in what he obvi­ously hoped constituted a properly hypnotic voice. “You are going to sleep, sleep, sleep. You’re falling into a deep trance.”

“Am I?” The girl’s voice lacked any trace of emo­tion.

Ringdahl said, “I am your friend. Do you under­stand that?”

“Every living being is my friend, Joan answered in the same far-distant voice.

“What’s she mean by that?” Ringdahl asked Bal­kani.

“They often come up out of extended sense- deprivation spouting nonsense,” Balkani answered. “And she won’t do anything you tell her to, either. So you might as well not waste your valuable time.” “But she’s hypnotized, isn’t she?” the major de­manded with exasperation; clearly he did not under­stand.

Before Balkani could reply Joan spoke again. “It is you who are hypnotized.”

“Snap her out of it,” Ringdahl growled. “She gives me the creeps.”

“I can’t snap her out of anything,” Balkani said with a slight ironic smile; he felt mildly amused. “She’s as wide awake as we are, if not more so.” “Are you just going to leave her like that?” “Don’t worry.” Balkani patted his military superior patronizingly on the shoulder. “She’ll re­turn to normal in a few hours all by herself, if she wants to.”

“If she wants to?” Clearly Ringdahl did not like the sound of that.

“She may decide she wants to stay this way.” Balkani turned and spoke softly to Joan. “Who are you, dear?”

“I am you,” she answered promptly.

Ringdahl cursed. “Kill her or cure her, Balkani, but don’t leave her like this.”

“There is no death,” Joan said, mostly to herself. She did not really seem inclined to communicate; she seemed, in fact, virtually unaware of the two of them. “Listen, Balkani,” Ringdahl said angrily. “I

thought you said you could cure her of political maladjustment. Now she’s worse than ever. Let me remind you that—”

“Major Ringdahl, allow me to remind you of three things. One, that I did not promise anything. Two, that the treatments have hardly begun. And three, that you are meddling where you lack the specialized training to know what you’re doing.”

Ringdahl had raised his finger skyward to make an angry pronouncement, but forgot what he intended to say when Joan sat up suddenly and said, in the same detached voice, “I’m hungry.”

“Would you like a meal served in your room?” Balkani asked her, feeling sudden sympathy for her.

“Oh yes,” she said expressionlessly, then reached back and unzipped her cellophane coveralls. She slipped out of them without the slightest trace of embarrassment, but Major Ringdahl turned a mot­tled red and glanced the other way. Balkani watched her dress, a strange pain in his chest; it was a new feeling to him, one which he had never in his life felt before. Her body seemed so small and childlike and helpless; he wanted to protect her, to help her stay in her waking dream where everyone was her friend and death did not exist.

Joan led the way out of the room, a slight smile on her face, like a Mona Lisa or a Buddha, and as she passed Balkani he reached out and touched her arm. As if she had become a saint.

After she had eaten, Joan Hiashi moved to the window of her cell and looked out. The sun had sunk low; evening lay ahead and very close. Autumn came

early here, and a leaf, its rusty red made all the more brilliant by the sun, hung from its branch a few feet from Joan’s barred window, twisting meagerly in the breeze. Joan studied the leaf.

The sun disappeared.

The leaf became a black silhouette against the fading sky, and stars appeared behind it, faint but distinct. The smell of the sea hung in the air, and the taste of salt.

Joan continued to watch the leaf while the breeze grew colder and stronger, rising and falling with a great rushing sound, like someone breathing in her ear. Still she stood motionless, one hand resting on the smooth metal sill of the window, the other by her side.

Still she watched the leaf as the last fragments of daylight departed and the wind, growing stronger with each moment, rushed in her face and played in her hair.

An hour passed.

Two.

The leaf danced wildly to unheard music, tossing, twisting, swirling its cape in the darkness, seeming to sense that it had an audience.

At midnight Joan was still standing there, watching the leaf.

All night long she watched, and all night long the leaf danced for her with frantic abandon in the gale.

At dawn the wind slackened and the leaf drooped.

One brief weary turn, like a bow, and it fell, zig­zagging downward to lose itself in the multitude of other leaves on the ground below. Joan’s eyes fol­lowed it, then lost it.

The sun came up.

Joan sighed. She suddenly realized that she felt cold. Her skin had turned blue and was covered with goosebumps. Her teeth began to chatter and she shivered and rubbed herself vigorously, trying to get warm. Joan Hiashi had returned to normality, if by normality one meant this leafless world in which humans normally live.

Percy X stared stupidly at his bandaged left hand. He had cut it himself, smashed a drinking glass and attacked himself with one of the fragments; the sharp pain had dragged him back from that sucking void into which he had followed Joan, the void that drew her in and had almost drawn him in after her. He had realized with sudden terror that his whole personal­ity had begun dissolving, evaporating, and he had tried to break his telepathic contact with her but had been unable to, at least not until he had cut himself.

Now he cautiously entered her mind again—and found himself a stranger there. Everything had been moved about. He withdrew again, icy sweat breaking out on his forehead.

All at once he sensed someone coming. Guards.

The door unlocked and opened; one of the guards leaned in and said in a bored voice, "Come along now, buddy. Make it fast.”

Presently, with a guard on each side, he made his way briskly down a long corridor, past endless pro­cessions of locked doors. I wonder where they’re taking me, he mused—and scanned their minds to find out. They were taking him to Joan, on orders from Balkani. But why had Balkani given such or­ders? On a whim, most likely; on a drug-induced impulse. Still, Percy felt uneasy. Even Balkani’s whims seemed to have some enigmatic, almost un­natural, purpose.

To his amazement he found the door to her cell unlocked; in fact it hung slightly ajar.

“A visitor for you Miss Hiashi,” one of the guards announced.

Joan, who had been lying on her bunk gazing blankly at the ceiling, sat up and smiled. “Hello, Percy.”

The change in her could be seen at once. A certain air of seriousness, of maturity, that he had never perceived before.

The guard closed the door, leaving the two of them alone.

“You look like a sleepwalker,” he said presently.

“I’m awake for the first time in my life. Sit down. I have something to say to you.”

Cautiously, he seated himself at the foot of the bunk.

Joan said, “I have always told everyone, including myself, that the thing that came first with me was my career in TV. But that was a lie, even though it was a lie I convinced myself I believed in. There have been times when I’ve told myself I was in love with one man or another. You, for one. But that wasn’t true either. I threw away my career when I went into the mountains looking for you, and I’ve goofed up every love affair I’ve ever had, one way or another. Time and again, when success in one project or another was almost in my possession, I did some damn fool thing that ruined everything for me. Now I know that the one thing I’ve always feared most, deep down inside, was to succeed, to get the things I thought I wanted. I’ve always thought that people were against me, or that I had bad luck, but my real enemy was me. All my life, whenever I’ve tried to get something, the same demonic figure has stepped into my path and commanded me to halt, the same relentless phantom with my face. Doctor Balkani gave me a knife and let me kill that phantom. She screamed, Percy; she screamed for hours as I slowly cut her to pieces, as I washed myself clean of her. Now she’s dead and if I feel anything for her it’s a kind of loneliness. I’m all alone now that Joan Hiashi is dead.”

“You’re psychotic,” Percy said sharply. “Be­cause of the suffering you underwent; I know: I stayed in contact with you.”

“I’m not insane, Percy. And Balkani is only help­ing me to find what I’ve always wanted, all that time I pretended I wanted fame and prestige and money and you. He’s given me the courage to see—”

“He’s given you mental and spiritual death. “Oblivion,” Joan said.

“Can’t you see what he’s done to you?”

“Who, God?” Joan asked in a far-away voice. “No, Balkani!”

‘ ‘Doctor Balkani is my friend. If I have an enemy it must be God.”

He grabbed her by the arm, yanked her toward him. “I know what you experienced; don’t you un­derstand? Because of my talent I was there in the water and silence with you—you’re not telling me anything I didn’t go through myself. What I’m telling

you is that—” He broke off, tried to think it out. “You felt love for me; I did also, for you. What wasn’t real about that?’’ He clutched her arm, squeezing fiercely. “Answer me—”

“What do you see,” Joan said, “when you look at me? A little Japanese doll; isn’t that right? I don’t blame you for that. I gave myself to you for a play­thing and you played with me. What could be more natural? But I’m more than a doll. I really am tall, Percy; tall as a mountain. I’m tired of hunching down.”

“Nobody is asking you to hunch down.” He tight­ened his grip on her arm.

“You’re a telepath; you read men’s minds. But you don’t understand them. Doctor Balkani does not read minds, but he understands completely. How do you explain that, Percy X? I know why it is.” She smiled her strange, distant smile. “Balkani has read one mind down to its darkest depths. His own mind. Because he understands himself completely he doesn’t need telepathy to understand others. Don’t be fooled by the fact that he takes drugs; if you saw yourself the way you really are, as he sees himself, you’d need drugs, too, to stand it. You might even kill yourself. Because we are all monsters, Percy. De­mons from hell—foul, filthy, perverted and evil.” She spoke these words calmly, without a particle of emotion.

Percy said, “Stop talking like that.”

Carefully, she removed Percy X’s hands from her arm. “From now on I say what I wish. I’ve spoken to you honestly for the first time and you’ve acted as if I were insane; psychotic, as you put it. Okay. I ex-

pected that. I see that in order to be clear I must also be cruel. I’ve been trying to explain, all this time, that I don’t need you any more, Percy. Or anyone else.”

Late at night, after the last customer had left the fortune-telling parlor, Paul Rivers and Ed Newkom opened the crates which had arrived by rocket freight earlier in the day.

“Weapons, eh?” Ed said with satisfaction. “Something to fight our way into Balkani’s—”

“Not exactly,” Paul Rivers said, removing arm­fuls of plastic-foam padding from the foremost crate.

A robot lay in the crate. And, in the other crate, there would be a second robot. Both based on pro­totypes which Balkani himself had designed during the war. And now remodeled, Paul Rivers said to himself, to serve my own purposes.

“And what’s this?” Ed demanded. “A high- frequency transmitter?”

“No, a sensory distorter.” This, too, had been one of Balkani’s inventions, dating back to the pre-war Bureau of Psychedelic Research. “We’ll test these items out tonight, to make certain they work. Then contact Percy X and spring him as soon as we can.

Dawn had almost come when Percy X, lying sleep­less on his cot in his cell, heard the voice of Paul Rivers speak within his mind.

“Tomorrow, Percy.”

But how? Percy thought.

Quickly and without wasting words, Paul outlined his plan. It impressed Percy X, impressed him very much.

“Now I’m going to bed and try to get a few hours’ sleep,” Paul Rivers telepathed. “And I advise you to do the same. I’ll see you tomorrow, if nothing goes wrong.”

Percy felt the amplified mind of Doctor Rivers switch off, leaving only a last fleeting impression of great weariness.

Sleep. That was easy enough to say, Percy thought, but not so easy to achieve. Something lay in the back of his mind, something which ate away at him without letup, draining away his strength and resolution slowly and steadily. He wondered what it was.

A picture of Balkani’s face rose in Percy X’s mind. The beard. The pipe. The fire-ignited glittering eyes with the dilated pupils. No matter who rules this planet, Percy realized, Balkani will still find a place in the ruling class. . And what about me? he asked himself. What in God’s name is happening back in Tennessee? What are my last Neeg-parts doing? As-uming any are left.

I’ve got to get out of here, he said to himself. If I stay, Balkani will have me the way he had Joan.

Only a matter of time, he realized. And, when that happens, it’ll be foreordained as far as the bale is concerned.

He would not be getting any sleep, not with such thoughts lodged starkly in his mind.

At dawn the garbage truck came crashing and banging down the old highway beside the fjord and halted at the guard station just before the bridge, as it had done so many times over the years. The guards gave it a routine inspection and let it by. The truck

crossed the single-span suspension bridge and made its way, roaring, snorting and wheezing, up the road to the gates of the prison. There it was again in­spected and again passed, to park at last behind the prisoners’ mess hall. Two men in white coveralls stepped out, marched over to the garbage shed and disappeared inside. A moment later two guards stepped out into the sunlight and made their way briskly down the hallways that led from the kitchen.

A clank of keys sounded at the lock of Percy X’s door and a voice said, “Routine check. Step outside a minute, will you?” Percy scanned the area tele- pathically. Nobody was anywhere near.

He looked in the direction of the voice. There stood a man in a guard’s uniform. It was Percy X.

For a moment the human Percy X and the robot Percy X gazed at each other; then the human stepped out into the hall, where no TV spy-monitors watched. A moment later the robot Percy X reen­tered the room and lay down on the cot, while the human Percy X, now dressed in the guard’s uniform, locked the door.

Quickly he made his way to Joan Hiashi’s cell, making use of the knowledge of the combination on the intervening doors that he had gained in his pro­tracted period of mind-picking.

Two Joan Hiashis stood inside Joan’s door, one in prison uniform, the other in guard’s uniform. He could not tell which was the robot and which the human until the one in the guard’s uniform said, barely audibly, “She says she won’t go, sir.”

“If you don’t go,” Percy whispered hoarsely to her, “I won’t go.”

For a moment Joan remained silent. But he read in her mind, I can’t have you giving your life for me. She shrugged, then, and began listlessly, with agonizing slowness, to change clothes with the robot.

A moment later two “guards,” one tall and one short, made their way to the garbage shed. After a pause two garbage men, one tall and one short, emerged from the shed and carried two garbage cans to the truck. The shorter one seemed hardly strong enough for the task, but somehow she made it. Two more trips and all the garbage had been taken out.

The white-coveralled figures climbed into the truck and drove back out the gate.

“Took a long time, today,” the uniformed inspec­tor at the gate said sourly.

“Had to stop by the men’s room,” Percy X said.

The inspector shrugged and waved them past.

“Why didn’t they recognize us?” Joan whispered.

“Look at me,” Percy said briefly. She looked— and her eyes widened, The man beside her wasn’t Percy X at all. “It’s these gadgets on our belts,” Percy explained. “They project a false image into people’s minds; they make us look like what the person expects. Balkani perfected it a number of years ago, according to Doctor Rivers.”

“Oh yes,” Joan said faintly. “Doctor Rivers. I wondered when he’d show up again.”

They passed inspection at the other end of the bridge, too, and from there they found themselves in the clear.

In a garage just off the fjord-side highway, Doctor Paul Rivers and Ed Newkom sat on the fender of a sleek ionocraft, tensely waiting. Next to the wall two authentic garbage men, stiff and silent, looked sight­lessly on.

“Yes,” Paul said, glancing with approval at the hypnotized men. “I haven’t lost it, the ability.” In the old days, at the beginning of his professional practice, he had gone in a great deal for hyp­notherapy as had Freud. Much better, he reflected, to save something of the potency of hyp­notism for special occasions. Such as this.

“Got a light?” Ed asked tautly.

“I don’t smoke,” Paul answered. He brought outa tin of Inchkenneth Dean Swift snuff. “Oral gratifica­tion is oral gratification, and snuff doesn’t get soot down into you windpipe.”

“I’ll use the car lighter.” Ed muttered, with a psychosomatic cough. “Snuff—keerist; I prefer a bag of peanuts.” He climbed into the ionocraft and nervously lit a cigarette.

For a time the two men sat in silence, one smoking and the other taking pinch after pinch of snuff, and then they heard the distant roar of the elderly garbage truck, slamming and banging down the highway.

Instantly Paul hopped down from the fender and swung open the garage door. With a snort and noisy backfire the truck came rumbling in and stopped with a squeal of brakes. Percy X killed the turbine and jumped out, followed, more slowly, by Joan Hiashi. Paul at once closed the garage doors and strode over to greet them.

“I’m Paul Rivers, Percy,” he said as he shook hands with the hard-eyed Neeg-part leader, “and this is my coworker and friend, Ed Newkom.

Perhaps you recall, Miss Hiashi, that we met. Briefly.”

Joan gazed at him with unfocused eyes and ex­pressionless face, saying nothing. Within him, Paul shuddered. What has Balkani done to her? he asked himself. Such a lovely little creature and he’s man­aged to turn her into—God knows what. But, he thought, perhaps I can help her.

He gave a few instructions to the hypnotized gar­bage men, then stood back with a humorless smile on his lips as they obediently climbed into their truck. “Open the garage; door for them,” he said to Percy X. “Before they break it down.” Percy opened the door; the truck motor exploded into life and, a mo­ment later, lurched down the short driveway, swerved out onto the highway and headed off in the direction of Oslo.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ed said impatiently, stub­bing out his cigarette. The four of them got into the ionocraft, Paul seating himself behind the wheel; with a whoosh the vehicle shot out of the garage and over the smooth waters of the fjord.

“There’s one thing I’d like to know, Doctor Riv­ers,” Percy X said, not using his telepathic powers out of politeness to the non-telepaths present. ‘‘Why did you go to such risk and trouble to get us out?” He felt suspicion, deep and abiding.

“We have a favor,” Paul Rivers said, “to ask of you.” His voice held softness—and yet it sounded peculiarly firm.

“What favor?”

Paul Rivers said, “We want you to go back to Tennessee and die. Preferably like a hero.”