Wilkes was seated in an armchair to my right, Darla on the bed across the room. Vance was standing in front of me.
'Hello, Jake,' Wilkes said.
I nodded, then turned to Vance.
'I don't think we've been introduced,' he said. 'I'm Van Wyck Vance.'
'I know,' I told him. 'I've met your daughter, Daria. She speaks highly of you.'
They turned to Darla, who shook her head.
'How did you know?' Vance asked.
'A little birdie told me.'
Vance took a thoughtful puff on his cigarette, then shrugged. 'Well, you said he was resourceful, Corey.'
'Yes, he is,' Wilkes said.
Darla said, 'Jake, Daria is a name I rarely go by. Van always called me Darla.'
'Her mother named her,' Vance said, sitting down next to his daughter. 'I never cared for it. I remember when she used to come home in tears ? her schoolmates were teasing her by calling her 'Diarrhea.' Remember, Darla-darling?'
'I'm glad to say I've repressed that.'
Vance laughed.
I was sitting in another armchair with nothing binding me, and I thought now would be a good time to get up. I started to.
'Roadmap!' Wilkes said sharply.
I was startled enough to plop back down, then looked around for someone with a gun. Nobody was holding one on me. I felt weak. My head felt like a ball of fuzz sitting on my shoulders.
'You won't be able to get up, Jake,' Wilkes informed me. 'I planted the posthypnotic suggestion while you were under. Actually, I should say posthypnogogic. This thing doesn't induce a standard hypnotic trance.' He held up a thin bright-green tube about half a meter long. 'Subjects are ten times more suggestible under it. Even consciously being aware of the plant doesn't break the spell.'
'The Reticulans are very good at mind-control technology,' Vance said.
'Unfortunately,' Wilkes said, 'they don't know enough about human physiology yet to make this thing really useful. Twrrrll tells me they're working on it, but we're still as much a mystery to them as they are to us. If you were a Rikki, Jake, you'd be my obsequious slave, and would tell me anything I'd want to know, or do anything I'd want you to do. As it is, all the wand does to humans is either knock 'em out or turn them into shambling hulks in a highly suggestible state ? and I'm not enough of a psychometrician or a hypnotist to always get the results I need.' He brandished the wand at me in the manner of a headmaster reprimanding a wayward pupil. 'You're a tough customer, mister, I'm not at all sure I could make you tell me where you've hidden your little alien friend ? and even if I could, I have the sneaking suspicion I'm going to need your active cooperation to actually get hold of her. You've got her stashed with somebody on board, somebody ? a group, I bet ? with whom we can't readily punk around. A gaggle of Buddhist nuns… boy scouts… the damn Archbishop of Sea-home and his acolytes. I wouldn't be surprised. You're slippery, Jake. Slippery. No, I'm afraid I'll have to resort to old-fashioned methods of persuasion. Meantime…' He stroked the wand lovingly. 'This gizmo will keep you right where I want you.'
Vance said, 'I suppose a truth drug wouldn't do either?' Wilkes shook his head disdainfully, continuing to caress the wand.
'Ingenious little things,' he went on. 'Very powerful. The effect can cover a city block. You adjust the field- strength here.' He fiddled with one end of the rod, which was ringed with a wide silver band. 'This doodad here. The only drawback is that the effect can be thwarted by taking a simple tranquilizer. Of course, if the subject doesn't know that…'
'Tranquilizer?'
'Yes. You'd think the opposite would be true, wouldn't you? A high-altitude pill of some kind. An antidepressant. The way I understand it, that does almost no good at all.'
'Almost,' I said, feeling foolish.
'Why, are you on something? You did seem to be semiaware while you were under. Good try, Jake.'
'Seemed like a hell of a good idea at the time.'
'I'm curious, though. Did you actually know about the dream wand? Did you happen to be awake that night when we walked in at the commune?'
'Commune?'
'The religious — group's place. When a subject's already in normal sleep, there's no awareness of going under.'
I looked at Darla briefly. She looked slightly confused, so I thought it would be better not to mention the wand's use at the Militia station.
Wilkes picked up the byplay and looked at Darla, then at me. 'Something?' he asked.
'We do have the mystery of Jake's escape from the Militia station to explain,' Vance reminded him.
'Oh, yes. Twrrrll was sure he detected another wand in operation there. But that was most likely the Ryxx, don't you think?'
'How did they get hold of a dream wand?'
'Oh, the Ryxx are master traders. They probably paid the right price to a renegade Rikki and got it. Or they may have a similar technique of their own. Besides, we did see two Ryxx nearby.'
Vance grunted noncommittally.
'Who knows?' Wilkes conceded. 'They may not have done it, but they have just as much reason as we do to keep the map secret. Granted, it's hard to understand why they didn't grab Jake as soon as he came out, or try to, anyway. But they didn't.
And I'm not going to waste time wondering why. Someone got him out of there, for whatever treason.'
I said, 'May I ask a question?'
'Sure,' Wilkes said.
'Why did you come to the Teelies' farm that night?'
'You'd have to see to understand. Darla, would you call Twrrrll in here?'
Darla didn't get up. Vance rose and said, 'I will.' He went to the connecting hatch, opened it, and called the alien's name.
After a moment, Twrrrll came in. It struck me how tall he was, how sickly thin his limbs were, and how they contrasted with his seven-digited, powerful hands, hands that could envelop a human head and squeeze. His feet were huge as well. He wore no clothing except for crisscrossing strips of leatherlike material that wrapped his thorax like a harness.
'May I be of serrrvice?' the alien asked.
'Jake would like to see the mrrrllowharrr,' Wilkes said.
'Verrry well.'
It was a strange sensation to see him undrape an invisible something from his shoulders and cradle it in his hands. Stranger still to watch him stroke it with two fingers and trill to it softly. As he did so, something even more unsettling was happening to my perceptual apparatus. It wasn't like watching something flicker into existence out of thin air. No, not like that at all;
for the thing was there all the time. Everyone has had a similar experience. You look and look for a misplaced object, something you just had a minute ago but inexplicably misplaced, like a pennon a desktop. You search and search and can't find it, until someone points it out for you and it's right under your nose. The thing in the alien's hand existed, was there, but the fact simply had not registered in my brain. All at once the animal materialized, but I knew it had been there all along. I had seen it, but had not recorded it as a datum.
'It still amazes even me, Jake,' Wilkes said.
It was a match for the caterpillar-snake thing Susan had accidentally killed at the farm, its pink brain-bud glistening moistly in the overhead light. I felt queasy, desperately hoping my worst fears were unfounded.
'It was with you all the time, Jake. On your jacket, most of the time. Probably right under your collar, tucked away safe and snug.'
I felt like throwing up. 'How?' I said in a strangled voice.
'Strange survival tactic. Marvelous, really. Not visual camouflage, but perceptual camouflage. God knows how
