They had left Bokor behind them in the sanctum, and they met Bokor outside the building. That did not worry Brent, but he was admittedly perturbed when he passed a small group of people just off the sidewalk and noticed that its core was a third Bokor. He pulled Martha off the moving path and drew near the group.
Bokor was not being a Stapper this time. He was in ordinary iridescent robes. “I tell you I know,” he was insisting vigorously. “I am . . . I be Slanduch from State of South America, and I can tell you deviltry they be practicing there. Armament factories twice size of laboratories of Cosmos. They plan to destroy us; I know.”
A Stapper shoved his way past Brent. “Here now!” he growled. “What bees going on here?”
Bokor hesitated. “Nothing, sir. I was only—”
“Was, huh?”
“Pardon, sir. Beed. I be Slanduch, you see, and—”
One of the men in the crowd interrupted. “He beed telling us what all State needs to know—plans of State of South America to invade and destroy us.”
“Hm-m-m!” the Stapper ejaculated. “You be right, man. That sounds like something to know. Go on, you.”
Bokor resumed his rumor mongering, and the Stapper lent it official endorsement by his listening silence. Brent moved to get a glimpse of the Stappers face. His guess was right. It was another Bokor.
This significant byplay had delayed them enough so that Brent’s three travelers had reached the apartment before them. When they arrived, Stephen was deep in a philosophical discussion with the Venusian of the tragic nobility of human nature, while Kruj and Mimi were experimenting with bond. Their respective civilizations could not have been markedly alcoholic; Kruj had reached the stage of sweeping and impassioned gestures, while Mimi beamed at him and giggled occasionally.
All three had discarded the standardized robes of the Stasis and resumed, in this friendly privacy, the clothes in which they had arrived—Kruj a curiously simplified and perverted version of the ruffled court costume of the Elizabethan era he had hoped to reach, Mimi the startling armor of an unfamiliar metal which was her uniform as Amazon warrior, and Nikobat a bronze-colored loincloth against which his green skin assumed an odd beauty.
Brent introduced Martha’s guests to their hostess and went on, “Now for a staff meeting of G.H.Q. We’ve got to lay our plans carefully, because we’re up against some stiff opposition. There’s one other traveler who—”
“One moment,” said Martha’s voice. “Shouldn’t you introduce me, too?”
“I beg your pardon, madam. I just finished that task of courtesy. And now—”
“I be sorry,” her voice went on. “You still do not understand. You introduced Martha, yes—but not me.”
Stephen turned to the travelers. “I must apologize for my sister. She haves goed through queer experiences of late. She traveled with our friend John and meeted herself in her earlier life. I fear that shock has temporarily—and temporally— unbalanced her.”
“Can none of you understand so simple thing?” the woman’s voice pleaded. “I be simply using Martha’s voice as instrument of communication. I can just as easily—”
“ ’Steeth!” Kruj exclaimed. “’Tis eke as easy and mayhap more pleasant to borrow this traveler’s voice for mine explications.”
“Or,” Mimi added, “I cou taw li thih, but I do’ like ih vey muh.”
Stephen’s eyes popped. “You mean that you be traveler without body?”
“Got it in one,” Brent heard his own voice saying. “I can wander about any way I damned please. I picked the woman first because her mind was easy to occupy, and I think I’ll go on using her. Brent here’s a little hard to keep under control.” Stephen nodded. “Then all good advice Martha haves beed giving us—”
“Bees mine, of course.” The bodiless traveler was back in Martha now.
Brent gasped. “And now I see how you wangled the release of the travelers. You got us in by usurping the mind and speech of each of the minor officials we tackled, and then ousted the Head of State and Chief of Stappers to make them give their consent.” Martha nodded. “Exactly.”
“This is going to be damned useful. And where do you come from, sir? Or is it madam?”
“I come from future so far distant that even our Venusian friend here cannot conceive of it. And distinction between sir and madam bees then meaningless.” The dapper Kruj glanced at the hulking Amazon beside him. “ ’Twere a pity,” he murmured.
“And your intentions here, to go on with the State linguist’s questionnaire?”
“My intentions? Listen, all of you. We cannot shape ends. Great patterns be shaped outside of us and beyond us. I beed historian in my time. I know patterns of mankind even down to minute details. And I know that Stephen here bees to lead people of this Age of Smugness out of their stupidity and back to humanity.”
Stephen coughed embarrassedly. “I have no wish to lead. But for such cause man must do what he may.”
“That bees ultimate end of this section of pattern. That bees fixed. All that we travelers can do bees to aid him as wisely as we can and to make the details of the pattern as pleasing as may be. And that we will do.”
Stephen must have been so absorbed in this speech that his hearing was dulled. The door opened without warning, and Bokor entered.
“’Swounds!” Kruj cried out. “A Stapper!”
Stephen smiled. “Why fear Stappers? You be legally liberated.”
“Stapper, hell!” Brent snorted. “Well, Bokor? You still want to declare yourself in with your racket?”
Bokor’s deep eyes swept the room. He smiled faintly. “I merely wished to show you something, Brent. So that you know what you be up against. I have finded two young scientists dissatisfied with scholastic routine of research for Cosmos. Now they work under me and they have maked for me—this.” He held a bare rod in his hand.
“So it’s a rod. So what next?”
“But it
