“I watched. I listened. And I’ve known Dick Muller for forty-odd years.”
“The last nine years are the ones that count. They’ve twisted him.” Rawlins bent into a crouch to get on Boardman’s level. Boardman nudged a candied pear onto his fork, equalized gravity, and flipped it idly toward his mouth. He’s intentionally ignoring me, Rawlins thought. He said, “Charles, be serious. I’ve gone in there and told Muller some monstrous lies. I’ve offered him a completely fraudulent cure, and he threw it back in my face.”
“Saying he didn’t believe it existed. But he
“Please. Listen. Assume he does come to believe me. Assume he leaves the maze and puts himself in our hands. Then what? Who gets the job of telling him that there isn’t any cure, that we’ve tricked him shamelessly, that we merely want him to be our ambassador again, to visit a bunch of aliens twenty times as strange and fifty times as deadly as the ones that ruined his life?
“You won’t have to, Ned. I’ll be the one.”
“And how will he react? Are you simply expecting him to smile and bow and say, very clever, Charles, you’ve done it again? To yield and do whatever you want? No. He couldn’t possibly. You can get him out of the maze, maybe, but the very methods you use for getting him out make it inconceivable that he can be of any use to you once he
“That isn’t necessarily true,” said Boardman calmly.
“Will you explain the tactics you propose to use, then, once you’ve informed him that the cure is a lie and that there’s a dangerous new job he has to undertake?”
“I prefer not to discuss future strategy now.”
“I resign,” Rawlins said.
4
Boardman had been expecting something like that. A noble gesture; a moment of headstrong defiance; a rush of virtue to the brain. Abandoning now his studied detachment, he looked up, his eyes locking firmly on Rawlins’. Yes, there was strength there. Yes, determination. But not guile. Not yet.
Quietly Boardman said, “You resign? After all your talk of service to mankind? We need you, Ned. You’re the indispensable man, our link to Muller.”
“My dedication to mankind includes a dedication to Dick Muller,” Rawlins said stiffly. “He’s part of mankind, whether he thinks so or not. I’ve already committed a considerable crime against him. If you won’t let me in on the rest of this scheme, I’m damned if I’ll have any part in it.”
“I admire your convictions.”
“My resignation still stands.”
“I even agree with your position,” said Boardman. “I’m not proud of what we must do here. I see it as part of historical necessity—the need for an occasional betrayal for the greater good. I have a conscience too, Ned, an eighty-year-old conscience, very well developed. It doesn’t atrophy with age. We just learn to live with its complaints, that’s all.”
“How are you going to get Muller to cooperate? Drug him? Torture him? Brainblast him?”
“None of those.”
“What, then? I’m serious, Charles. My role in this job ends right here unless I know what’s ahead.”
Boardman coughed, drained his wine, ate a peach, took three pills in quick succession. Rawlins’ rebellion had been inevitable, and he was prepared for it, and yet he was annoyed that it had come. Now was the time for calculated risks. He said, “I see that it’s time to drop the pretenses, then, Ned. I’ll tell you what’s in store for Dick Muller—but I want you to consider it within the framework of the larger position. Don’t forget that the little game we’ve been playing on this planet isn’t simply a matter of private moral postures. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I have to remind you that mankind’s fate is at stake.”
“I’m listening, Charles.”
“Very well. Dick Muller must go to our extragalactic friends and convince them that human beings are indeed an intelligent species. Agreed? He alone is capable of doing this, because of his unique inability to cloak his thoughts.”
“Agreed.”
“Now, it isn’t necessary to convince the aliens that we’re good people, or that we’re honorable people, or that we’re lovable people. Simply that we have minds and can think. That we feel, that we sense, that we are something other than clever machines. For our purposes, it doesn’t matter
“I begin to see.”
“Therefore, once he’s out of the maze we can tell him what his assignment is to be. No doubt he’ll get angry at our trickery. But beyond his anger he may see where his duty lies. I hope so. You seem to think he won’t. But it makes no difference, Ned. He won’t be given an option once he leaves his sanctuary. He’ll be taken to the aliens and handed over to them to make contact. It’s brutal, I know. But necessary.”
“His cooperation is irrelevant, then,” said Rawlins slowly.
“He’ll just be dumped. Like a sack.”
“A
“I—”
“No, Ned. Don’t say anything now. I know what you’re thinking. You hate the scheme. You have to. I hate it myself. Just go off, now, and think it over. Examine it from all sides before you come to a decision. If you want out tomorrow, let me know and we’ll carry on somehow without you, but promise me you’ll sleep on it, first. Yes? This is no time for a snap judgment.”
Rawlins’ face was pale a moment. Then color flooded into it. He clamped his lips. Boardman smiled benignly. Rawlins clenched his fists, squinted, turned, hastily went out.
A calculated risk.
Boardman took another pill. Then he reached for the flask Muller had sent him. He poured a little. Sweet, gingery, strong. An excellent liqueur. He let it rest a while on his tongue.
ELEVEN
1
Muller had almost come to like the Hydrans. What he remembered most clearly and most favorably about them was their grace of motion. They seemed virtually to float. The strangeness of their bodies had never bothered him much; he was fond of saying that one did not need to go far from Earth to find the grotesque. Giraffes. Lobsters. Sea anemones. Squids. Camels. Look objectively at a camel and ask yourself what is less strange about its body than about a Hydran’s.
He had landed in a damp, dreary part of the planet, a little to the north of its equator, on an amoeboid continent occupied by a dozen large quasicities, each spread out over several thousand square kilometers. His life-support system, specially designed for this mission, was little more than a thin filtration sheet that clung to him like a second skin. It fed air to him through a thousand dialysis plaques. He moved easily if not comfortably within it.
He walked for an hour through a forest of the giant toadstoollike trees before he came upon any of the natives. The trees ran to heights of several hundred meters; perhaps the gravity, five-eighths Earthnorm, had
