“Is that right, Ruth?” The recorder looked up from her notebook.
“Yes, it is. But Benny knows that, and he's in the circle.”
“I didn't know,” retorted Benny.
“You darn well ought to—I've told you enough times.”
“Subconscious memory,” murmured Rupert. “That often happens. But can we have some more intelligent questions, please? Now that this has started so well, I don't want It to peter out.”
Curiously enough, the very triviality of the phenomenon was beginning to impress George. He was sure that there was no supernormal explanation; as Rupert had said, the plate was simply responding to their unconscious muscular movements. But this fact in itself was surprising and impressive: he would never have believed that such precise, swift replies could have been obtained. Once he tried to see if he could influence the board by making it spell out his own name. He got the “G', but that was all: the rest was nonsense. It was virtually impossible, he decided, for one person to take control without the remainder of the circle knowing it.
After half an hour, Ruth had taken down more than a dozen messages, some of them quite long ones. There were occasional spelling mistakes and curiosities of grammar, but they were few. Whatever the explanation, George was now convinced that he was not contributing consciously to the results. Several times, as a word was being spelt out, he had anticipated the next letter and hence the meaning of the message. And on each occasion the plate had gone in a quite unexpected direction and spelt something totally different. Sometimes, indeed—since there was no pause to indicate the end of one word and the beginning of the next—the entire message was meaningless until it was complete and Ruth had read it back.
The whole experience gave George an uncanny impression of being in contact with some purposeful, independent mind. And yet there was no conclusive proof one way or the other. The replies were so trivial, so ambiguous. What, for example, could one make of:
BELIEVEINMANNATURRISWITHYOU.
Yet sometimes there were suggestions of profound, even disturbing truths:
REMEMBERMANISNOTALONENEARMANISCOUNTRYOFOTHERS.
But of course everyone knew that—though could one be sure that the message merely referred to the Overlords?
George was growing very sleepy. It was high time, he thought drowsily, that they headed for home. This was all very Intriguing, but it wasn't getting them anywhere and you could have too much of a good thing. He glanced around the table.
Benny looked as if he might be feeling the same way, Maia and Rupert both appeared slightly glazed, and Jean—well, she had been taking it too seriously all along. Her expression worried George; it was almost as if she were afraid to stop—yet afraid to go on.
That left only Jan. George wondered what he thought of his brother-in-law's eccentricities. The young engineer had asked no questions, shown no surprise at any of the answers. He seemed to be studying the movement of the plate as if it was just another scientific phenomenon.
Rupert roused himself from the lethargy into which he appeared to have fallen.
“Let's have one more question,” he said, “then we'll call it a day. What about you, Jan? You've not asked anything.”
Surprisingly, Jan never hesitated. It was as if he had made his choice a long time ago and had been waiting for the opportunity. He glanced once at the impassive bulk of Rashaverak, then called out in a clear, steady voice:
“Which star is the Overlord's sun?”
Rupert checked a whistle of surprise. Maia and Benny showed no reaction at all. Jean had closed her eyes and seemed to be asleep. Rashaverak had leaned forward so that he could look down into the circle over Rupert's shoulder.
And the plate began to move.
When it came to rest again, there was a brief pause: then Ruth asked, in a puzzled voice:
“What does NGS 549672 mean?”
She got no reply, for at the same moment George called out anxiously:
“Give me a hand with Jean. I'm afraid she's fainted.”
9
“This man Boyce,” said Karellen. “Tell me all about him.” The Supervisor did not use those actual words, of course, and the thoughts he really expressed were far more subtle. A human listener would have heard a short burst of rapidly modulated sound, not unlike a high-speed Morse sender in action. Though many samples of Overlord language had been recorded, they all defied analysis because of their extreme complexity. The speed of transmission made it certain that no interpreter, even if he had mastered the elements of the language, could ever keep up with the Overlords in their normal conversation.
The Supervisor for Earth stood with his back to Rashaverak, staring out across the multicoloured gulf of the Grand Canyon. Ten kilometres away, yet scarcely veiled by distance, the terraced walls were catching the full force of the sun. Hundreds of metres down the shadowed slope at whose brim Karellen stood, a mule-train was slowly winding its way into the valley's depths. It was strange, Karellen thought, that so many human beings still seized every opportunity for primitive behaviour. They could reach the bottom of the canyon in a fraction of the time, and in far greater comfort, if they chose. Yet they preferred to be jolted along tracks which were probably as unsafe as they looked.
Karellen made an imperceptible gesture with his hand. The great panorama faded from view, leaving only a shadowy blankness of indeterminable depth. The realities of his office and of his position crowded in upon the Supervisor once more.
“Rupert Boyce is a somewhat curious character,” Rashaverak answered.
“Professionally, he's in charge of animal welfare over an important section of the main African reservation. He's quite efficient, and interested in his work. Because he has to keep watch over several thousand square kilometres, he has one of the fifteen panoramic viewers we've so far issued on loan—with the usual safeguards, of course. It is, incidentally, the only one with full projection facilities. He was able to make a good case for these, so we let him have them.”
“What was his argument?”
“He wanted to appear to various wild animals so that they could get used to seeing him, and so wouldn't attack when he was physically present. The theory has worked out quite well with animals that rely on sight rather than smell—though he'll probably get killed eventually. And, of course, there was another reason why we let him have the apparatus.”
“It made him more co-operative?”
“Precisely. I originally contacted him because he has one of the world's finest libraries of books on parapsychology and allied subjects. He politely but firmly refused to lend any of them, so there was nothing to do but to visit him. I've now read about half his library. It has been a considerable ordeal.”
“That I can well believe,” said Karellen dryly. “Have you discovered anything among all the rubbish?”
“Yes—eleven clear cases of partial breakthrough, and twenty-seven probables. The material is so selective, however, that one cannot use it for sampling purposes. And the evidence is hopelessly confused with mysticism— perhaps the prime aberration of the human mind.”
“And what is Boyce's attitude to all this?”
“He pretends to be open-minded and skeptical, but it's clear that he would never have spent so much time and effort in this field unless he had some subconscious faith. I challenged him on this and he admitted that I was
