Diplomatic Immunity

thing.

'What do you figure the Ambassador is?' he asked Harrison. 'Is he a man?'

'Looks like one,' Harrison said drowsily.

'But he doesn't act like one. I wonder if this is his true shape?'

Harrison shook his head, and lighted his pipe.

'What is there of him?' Cercy asked. 'He looks like a man, but he can change into anything else. You can't attack him; he adapts. He's like water, taking the shape of any vessel he's poured into.'

'You can boil water,' Harrison yawned.

'Sure. Water hasn't any shape, has it? Or has it? What's basic?'

With an effort, Harrison tried to focus on Cercy's words. 'Molecular pattern? The matrix?'

'Matrix,' Cercy repeated, yawning himself. 'Pattern. Must be something like that. A pattern is abstract, isn't it?'

'Sure. A pattern can be impressed on anything. What did I say?'

'Let's see,' Cercy said. 'Pattern. Matrix. Everything about the Ambassador is capable of change. There must be some unifying force that retains his personality. Something that doesn't change, no matter what contortions he goes through.'

'Like a piece of string,' Harrison murmured with his eyes closed.

'Sure. Tie it in knots, weave a rope out of it, wind it around your finger; it's still string.'

'Yeah.'

'But how do you attack a pattern?' Cercy asked. And why couldn't he get some sleep? To hell with the Ambassador and his hordes of colonists, he was going to close his eyes for a moment....

'Wake up, Colonel!'

Cercy pried his eyes open and looked up at Malley. Besides him, Harrison was snoring deeply. 'Did you get anything?'

'Not a thing,' Malley confessed. 'The philosophy must've had quite an effect on him. But it didn't work all the way. Darrig knew that he had wanted to kill the Ambassador, and for good and sufficient reasons. Although he felt differently now, he still had the feeling that he was betraying us. On the one hand, he couldn't hurt the Ambassador; on the other, he wouldn't hurt us.'

'Won't he tell anything?'

'I'm afraid it's not that simple,' Malley said. 'You know, if you have an insurmountable obstacle that must be surmounted ... and also, I think the philosophy had an injurious effect on his mind.'

'What are you trying to say?' Cercy got to his feet.

'I'm sorry,' Malley apologized, 'there wasn't a damned thing I could do. Darrig fought the whole thing out in his mind, and when he couldn't fight any longer, he—retreated. I'm afraid he's hopelessly insane.'

'Let's see him.'

They walked down the corridor to Malley's laboratory. Darrig was relaxed on a couch, his eyes glazed and staring.

'Is there any way of curing him?' Cercy asked.

'Shock therapy, maybe.' Malley was dubious. 'It'll take a long time. And he'll probably block out everything that had to do with producing this.'

Cercy turned away, feeling sick. Even if Darrig could be cured, it would be too late. The aliens must have picked up the Ambassador's message by now and were undoubtedly heading for Earth.

'What's this?' Cercy asked, picking up a piece of paper that lay by Darrig's hand.

'Oh, he was doodling,' Malley said. 'Is there anything written on it?'

Cercy read aloud: ''Upon further consideration I can see that Chaos and the Gorgon Medusa are closely related.''

'What does that mean?' Malley asked.

'I don't know,' Cercy puzzled. 'He was always interested in folklore.'

'Sounds schizophrenic,' the psychiatrist said.

Cercy read it again. ''Upon further consideration, I can see that Chaos and the Gorgon Medusa are closely related.'' He stared at it. 'Isn't it possible,' he asked Malley, 'that he was trying to give us a clue? Trying to trick himself into giving and not giving at the same time?'

'It's possible,' Malley agreed. 'An unsuccessful compromise—But what could it mean?'

'Chaos.' Cercy remembered Darrig's mentioning that word in his telephone call. 'That was the original state of the Universe in Greek myth, wasn't it? The formlessness out of which everything came?'

'Something like that,' Malley said. 'And Medusa was one of those three sisters with the horrible faces.'

Cercy stood for a moment, staring at the paper. Chaos ... Medusa ... and the organizing principle! Of course!

'I think—' He turned and ran from the room. Malley looked at him; then loaded a hypodermic and followed.

In the control room, Cercy shouted Harrison into consciousness.

'Listen,' he said, 'I want you to build something, quick. Do you hear me?'

'Sure.' Harrison blinked and sat up. 'What's the rush?'

'I know what Darrig wanted to tell us,' Cercy said. 'Come on, I'll tell you what I want. And Malley, put down that hypodermic. I haven't cracked. I want you to get me a book on Greek mythology. And hurry it up.'

Finding a Greek mythology isn't an easy task at two o'clock in the morning. With the aid of FBI men, Malley routed a book dealer out of bed. He got his book and hurried back.

Cercy was red-eyed and excited, and Harrison and his helpers were working away at three crazy looking rigs. Cercy snatched the book from Malley, looked up one item, and put it down.

'Great work,' he said. 'We're all set now. Finished, Harrison?'

'Just about.' Harrison and ten helpers were screwing in the last parts. 'Will you tell me what this is?'

'Me too,' Malley put in.

'I don't mean to be secretive,' Cercy said. 'I'm just in a hurry. I'll explain as we go along.' He stood up. 'Okay, let's wake up the Ambassador.'

They watched the screen as a bolt of electricity leaped from the ceiling to the Ambassador's bed. Immediately, the Ambassador vanished.

'Now he's a part of that stream of electrons, right?' Cercy asked.

'That's what he told us,' Malley said.

'But still keeping his pattern, within the stream,' Cercy continued. 'He has to, in order to get back into his own shape. Now we start the first disrupter.'

Harrison hooked the machine into circuit, and sent his helpers away.

'Here's a running graph of the electron stream,' Cercy said. 'See the difference?' On the graph there was an irregular series of peaks and valleys, constantly shifting and leveling. 'Do you remember when you hypnotized the Ambassador? He talked about his friend who'd been killed in space.'

'That's right,' Malley nodded. 'His friend had been killed by something that had just popped up.'

'He said something else,' Cercy went on. 'He told us that the basic organizing force of the Universe usually stopped things like that. What does that mean to you?'

'The organizing force,' Malley repeated slowly. 'Didn't Darrig say that that was a new natural law?'

'He did. But think of the implications, as Darrig did. If an organizing principle is engaged in some work, there must be something that opposes it. That which opposes organization is—'

'Chaos!'

'That's what Darrig thought, and what we should have seen. The chaos is underlying, and out of it there