Mekkis did not know this, but, had he known, he would not have cared. Because a report had come in—news completely unexpected
“Percy X and Joan Hiashi,” his wik secretary informed him, “have escaped from Balkani’s establishment in Norway.” A pause and then the secretary said, “Dr. Balkani is dead.”
For a moment Mekkis ceased to think. He sat, mouth open, his tongue frozen. “How did it happen?” he asked at last.
“Suicide, it would appear.
“No,” Mekkis whispered. “It can’t be suicide.” “I’m only passing on what information I got from Cultural Control,” the secretary said.
“Is there anything more?”
The secretary said, “It seems almost certain that Percy X has returned to this bale; that has Cultural Control in a panic because it indicates that resistance to Gany rule may be much more widespread and subtle than had been previously believed. Someone managed to slip two simulacra into Balkani’s establishment, one of Percy X and one of Joan Hiashi; Balkani evidently didn’t recognize the switch, even though the simulacra had been built from one of his designs. There is speculation that Balkani was a double agent and that all of the wiks trained by him may be imprinted with lethal post-hypnotic suggestions.
Some have already killed themselves—for no apparent reason.”
“Thank you,” Mekkis said in a strangled voice. He tongued off the intercom and sat for a long time in silence. All around him lay the articles, monographs, books and pamphlets of Dr. Balkani, and Mekkis thought, As long as I am alive Balkani is alive, too. What he began I will finish. The work of the man exists entire in my mind.
Harshly, he called for his creeches. They came, scuttling and scampering and flapping, from the next room, pitifully happy to be once more noticed, once more of use to him.
“Electronics engineer,” Mekkis said.
“Yes,” squeaked the little being with the slender, delicate fingers.
“Rig up the thought amplifier that we use to contact the Great Common for short-range purposes,” he commanded. We live always in each other’s minds, he thought. Stuck together in a sticky mass through the Great Common, hardly existing as individuals at all.
But I, he thought, have become an individual; I have separated from the Great Womb and been born—as what? A true Ganymedian? A human? No; something else: a stranger in the universe belonging nowhere. A Balkani. The Great Common turned against me, cast me out to rot away in the most unwanted corner of the system. Now, he thought, I can thank them for it; if I hadn’t hated them I never would have seen the meaning of Dr. Balkani’s theories.
Theories? No, facts. The truth, the ultimate truth of existence.
“What,” the Oracle said apprehensively, “are you going to do with the thought amplifier when it is rigged?”
“I’m going to contact Percy X,” Mekkis informed him.
“Then,” the Oracle said with resignation, “it is too late to turn back. The great darkness is upon us and nothing can stop it now.”
XIV
When the Toms perceived the angel of light descending from the heavens they fled in terror, leaving the warehouse unguarded.
“That got those superstitious rats moving,” Percy X shouted in truimph. ‘‘Now set up a wall of fire around the warehouse to keep them out while we load up with supplies.”
“Right,” Lincoln said, moving the dials of his mechanism and concentrating.
Almost at once the flames became so hot that it was hard for the two Neeg-parts to breathe. But the fire burned without consuming. Working quickly and efficiently the two men soon had their ionocraft so heavily loaded that they knew it would be reluctant to leave the ground.
As they worked, Percy sang—one of the wordless microtonal chants that had grown out of many cold nights in the mountains. It’s good to feel my muscles pull, he said to himself. Much better than to think when thought only leads to despair. A moment later the ionocraft, with its cargo and the two men inside it, glided away from the flame-surrounded warehouse and headed, unobserved, for the mountains.
As they flew, Percy became more and more aware of the sensation of being a bird and less and less aware of being a man flying an ionocraft. He had ceased to see the craft around him or its control panel; now he even ceased to feel the steering wheel and the pedals. He forgot, for an interval, that he had ever been a man. Nothing remained but air currents, which he could see by means of tiny distortions in the background of hills and trees. He was swimming in the air, feeling its currents as stresses on some sort of transparent plastic, feeling the different levels moving against each other like the different parts in a great choral hymn.
A voice called him from somewhere far away. He recognized it as the voice of Joan Hiashi and it said, “He knew you were listening. He’s a terrible ham.’’ For an instant he made out her face; then that face changed, the features moving, shifting about like moist plastic under the fingers of a sculptor, and it became Joan no longer; it became Lincoln Shaw, shouting at him, “Snap out of it! Snap out of it, Percy! We almost crashed!”
Gradually Percy returned to the ionocraft in which he sat. He looked out the window and saw the hills sweeping by on both sides of the craft. “I thought I was a bird,” he said unsteadily.
“Yeah, I know,” Lincoln said, shakily adjusting his battered horn-rimmed glasses. “I turned off the projector just in time.”
“I was singing to Joan. And Paul Rivers, he was there, too; I flew right up next to his face.”
“That’s what you think, man. That wasn’t Paul Rivers’ face you almost bumped into. That was the face of a solid rock cliff.”
“You’d better handle the controls until we get back to base camp,” Percy said, perspiring; his hands had begun to shake and the motion was communicated through the sensitive controls to the ionocraft itself. “Now you’re talking,” Lincoln said, taking over. For a time they skimmed along in silence and then Percy said, “The food will last better, now.” “That’s one of the advantages,” Lincoln said caustically, “of having fewer mouths to feed.”
“How many will there be when we get back?” Lincoln said, “Don’t ask me, man.”
“All I know anymore,” Percy said, “is that—” He broke off. Within his mind a voice had spoken. “I hear a voice,” he said.
“The projector,” Lincoln said. “Don’t pay any attention to it.”
“Is that you, Percy X?” the voice asked.
“Yes,” Percy answered. There was something naggingly familiar about the voice and about the vague emotional shapes that floated behind it. For a moment he thought it was Dr. Balkani and then he realized it was Mekkis, a terribly changed Mekkis—a far cry from the cool, self-assured administrator of power that Percy had faced the day of his capture. Mekkis now had strange, painful, sharp vibrations infused throughout him.
“I have a proposition for you,” Mekkis said jerkily.
“I’ve already heard your proposition,” Percy said, “and I’m not buying it.”
“This,” Mekkis said, “is different. Previously I asked you to join me; now I’d like to join you—against our mutual enemy, the Great Common ot Ganymede.”
The prison of Ulvo:ya lay almost deserted under a gray, low, slow-moving overcast. The cell doors, even the entrances to the buildings, stood open, so that some of the bolder sea gulls found themselves able to enter and roam through the long dim hallways in search of food. The smell of their droppings had already begun to taint the chill air, and their cries echoed up and down the passageways like distant, despairing screams for help.
Hearing these cries the creeches of Marshal Koli clustered close around their master, shivering, telling themselves that no matter what happened their master would know what to do. Koli, as he lay on the analyst’s couch in what formerly had been Dr. Bal- kani’s office, paid no attention to his surroundings at all, but gave himself
