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Forester leaned wearily back in the chair.
"The advantages to you are considerable," Ironsmith urged. "You can keep your
memory - I'll see that you find congenial scientific employment on some
project the humanoids approve. You can soon earn any other privileges you
wish. Isn't that better than euphoride?"
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Forester sat up again, warily alert.
"I don't want any more of that," he muttered huskily. "But I can't tell you
anything. Not unless-" He bit his lip, and blurted, "Who else is with you?"
Smiling, Ironsmith shook his head.
"At least I must know one thing." Forester searched his open face, shivering
inwardly. "Did you - or any of these mysterious associates who play chess with
you - remove any military equipment from the vicinity of the old military
installation here?"
"That doesn't matter." Ironsmith's amiable smile had widened slightly, but now
his blue eyes lit with a cool, unspoken speculation from which Forester
flinched. "What's your answer?"
"Send back your damned machines!" Watching Ironsmith drawing calmly on the
pipe, he stifled an unruly pang of desire for that forbidden indulgence. "I
don't know what sort of man you are - or even if you are a man!" Feeling a
tingle at the back of his neck, he tried to lower his voice. "But I'm not
turning against mankind."
"I had hoped for something a little more sane." Almost sadly, Ironsmith shook
his sandy head. "I had hoped you had learned enough by now to face reality,
Forester, because we're offering you quite an unusual opportunity. But we've
other ways of getting at White." His tweedy shoulders lifted carelessly.
"Because the man's more fool than philosopher, and his own folly will some
time give him up - I hope before he has done too much harm."
His mild voice fell, hopefully urgent.
"But I don't like to abandon you, Forester. I still wish you would reconsider,
because we can show you a width and breadth and depth of living you never even
dreamed of, and a creative splendor of life you never imagined. Won't you
trust me - even if you won't the humanoids - and come along?"
"Trust you?" Gulping painfully, Forester tried to laugh. "Get out!"
And Ironsmith turned to the door, which slid open as promptly as if he had
been another mechanical. He glanced back, with an odd little grin as if of
baffled sympathy, and stepped quickly out. Three humanoids came in, one of
them carrying a hypodermic needle.
"Service, Clay Forester," it said. "We are acting under the Prime Directive,
to make you happy again."
The other two moved with their incredible agility to catch him before he could
scramble out of the chair. He tried to flinch from the one with the needle,
but the black hands held him, gentle and invincible. He watched the flashing
stroke of the needle, waiting - but it didn't reach his arm.
Chapter NINETEEN
FOR THAT first staggered instant, Forester thought that his own frantic
squirming had somehow broken the unbreakable grasp of the machines. He thought
he had fallen, somehow, out of that padded chair - until he realized that he
was no longer in the villa at Starmont. Picking himself up from a cold surface
of hard-packed sand, he looked around him dazedly.
"Oh, Dr. Forester!" Unbelievingly, he recognized the thin, clear voice of
little Jane Carter. "Did we hurt you?"
His bewildered eyes found her, and then Mark White and Lucky Ford, Graystone
the Great, and Ash Overstreet. They stood spaced around him, all watching him.
Curiously taut at first, their faces were slowly relaxing. Ford wiped his
nervous claws of hands with a bright handkerchief. Old Graystone dipped his
red nose in an awkward bow of welcome. Overstreet nodded, blinking dimly.
Still majestic in that worn silver cloak, splendid with that flowing, fiery
mane and beard, Mark White came striding to help him rise.
"So we got you!" the huge man boomed softly. "Welcome to our sanctuary!"
Grasping White's great hand, Forester came up awkwardly, careful of his leg.
The knee felt weak, but it bore his weight without pain. He peered around him,
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shaken by a cold unbelief. Overhead was an uneven natural dome of water-carved
limestone, encrusted with stalactites and shining with white calcite crystals,
curving down on every side to the hard black sand. The air was damp and cold.
Somewhere he heard a thin whisper of water running.
"Where-" He had to swallow. "Where is this?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]