“Sure,” he said. “What address.”
Arne handed him the slip of paper.
The driver glanced at it, returned it, said cheerfully, “Gotcha,” and drove off.
The trip, through the night-time strangeness of a vast metropolitan area, seemed interminable to Arne and confusing beyond the scope of reason. He’d had no idea how fond the people of the past were of words and letters. Occasionally he had seen these displayed in scenes the large len showed them, but he hadn’t realized that the night sky would be ablaze with them— for what purpose he couldn’t imagine.
Eventually they put the city’s clutter behind them. The scientist lived in an area of widely-scattered, wealthy- looking homes. His house was set far back from the road in a wooded, park-like setting, and they followed a winding drive to the front door. Outside lights came on while Arne was getting out of the cab. He read the fare on the meter, deftly calculated a fifteen percent tip, and added another five per cent for unusual service. As first server of the Peerdom of Midlow, he’d had to be adroit in figuring percentages—that was how he apportioned food among the villages—and he had learned about numbers and money when Roszt and Kaynor were studying them. He paid the driver and watched the cab roll away before he mounted the steps.
The door opened as he reached the stoop. The man who faced him through the screen door was same tall, slender, bearded man he had watched doing tests on the len. Arne felt comfortable in his presence at once because of the beard. A civilization of clean-shaven men, along with so many women with long hair, gave him a sensation of inferiority everywhere he turned. To Arne, all of them were peeragers.
The man said—testily, as though he didn’t welcome being disturbed by late callers—“Yes?”
Arne said, “Marcus Brock?”
For a moment he thought the man was going to deny his own identity, but it was only Arne’s pronunciation that he was denying. “Marcus Brock,” he said, making it sound very different. “That’s me. What do you want?”
“Have let-ter,” Arne said and offered it.
The professor opened the screen door. “Come in.”
He escorted Arne into a large room that seemed packed to the bursting point with meaningless clutter, got him seated in a plushly cushioned chair, and sat down nearby to read the letter. When he finished, he studied Arne doubtfully for a moment, and then he read it again.
“You are Arne?” he asked finally.
Arne pointed to himself. “Arne.”
“And you don’t understand English. ‘Saving Earth from destruction’ sounds serious,” he went on good- naturedly, “but surely it isn’t imperative to rescue it at this hour of the night. On the other hand, I certainly would like to know where that lens came from, and how it was made, and what it was used for. A pity you don’t speak English. Is there any other language we could communicate in?
Arne was gazing at him bewilderedly.
“Show me—” The professor glanced again at the letter. “Show me len.”
Arne got up and went to him, holding out Egarn’s weapon. He repeated the words Egarn had taught him. “Danger. Not touch. Look.”
Brock squinted carefully at the end that was extended to him. When he’d had time to recognize it as identical to the fragment he had seen, Arne obligingly let him see the len in the other end.
Brock got to his feet. “The letter also mentions a demonstration. De-mon-stra-tion. Never mind, I’m sure you know.”
He led Arne through rooms full of strangenesses, pausing along the way to take a handlight from a drawer. They exited through a rear door, and Brock’s handlight picked out a path. They moved past flower beds and a garden, past Brock’s workroom, and finally into a gully at the back of the property where a small stream flowed. Arne selected a huge boulder as his target. Lightning flashed, there was a crash of sound, and the professor hurried forward to wonderingly examine the smooth hole bored through stone. Arne waited, tube in his hand, in case another demonstration was needed.
It wasn’t.
Brock led him back to the house and to the room they had occupied before. “Wait,” he said and left Arne there. Arne seated himself and waited. He heard voices in a distant part of the house. Then the professor returned carrying a jacket.
“Are we going to the motel the stationery came from?” he asked. “I keep forgetting you can’t understand. Where—are— we—going? Where—”
Arne showed him his own piece of stationery.
“At least it’s a respectable address,” Brock said. “Let’s go.”
He led Arne through a different door and into a room where two automobiles were parked. They got into one of them, and Arne turned wide-eyed to watch the wall behind them rise up and fold against the beams overhead. They backed out and drove away.
The night-time strangeness looked just as confusing to Arne on the return trip. At the motel, Egarn responded to the signal Arne tapped. He greeted Brock warmly; the two shook hands. Then they sat down to talk.
And talk.
And talk.
Egarn used up the remaining stationery and much of his pocket notebook drawing diagrams. The two men forgot about Arne, who finally stretched out on the bed and fell asleep.
It was almost dawn when Egarn shook him awake. Brock was talking on the telephone. “He thinks we aren’t safe here,” Egarn said. “Probably he is right. If Gevis finds out where we are, it would be only too easy for him to land a company of Lantiff in the parking lot. One of us would have to keep alert all the time, and there are things that must be done. So we will check out immediately. Brock is asking friends to look after me. They will take me to a safe place—even Brock won’t know where are—but he can get in touch with me by telephone whenever he needs to. I know you wouldn’t enjoy being hidden away with nothing to do, so you can go with him. Help him as much as you can and guard him well—before this day is over, the Lantiff may be after him, too.”
“I can’t give him much help when I can’t talk with him,” Arne complained.
“You can recognize a Honsun Len when you see it. Except for me, you are the only person in the world—at this moment—who can.”
Brock hung up and turned to them. “Ready to go?”
He drove them to the office and waited outside with his motor running while the night clerk performed the necessary paperwork to check them out. Egarn explained that they had been called away by a business emergency but hoped to return in a day or two. The clerk diffidently accepted a large tip and breathed, “Yes, sir! We will be happy to have you back, sir.”
They drove away. After threading through the downtown area, Brock turned south on Mount Hope Avenue. “He hates war as much as we do,” Egarn told Arne. “He will see that the len is destroyed if he can find a way to do it. Separating us is his suggestion. Then if something happens to one of us, the other can fight on.”
They turned onto Joseph Wilson Boulevard. When they reached the university campus, a parked car blinked its lights at them. They slowed and came to a stop beside it. Egarn clasped Arne’s hand.
“I will be all right,” he said. “You are not to worry about me. You have a job to do.”
He stumbled awkwardly from the car, swung his own door shut behind him, and scrambled into the other car. Both vehicles drove away quickly.
Arne leaned back in the rear seat and worried about Egarn. He doubted Brock’s friends could be trusted to guard him properly. However capable they were, they would know nothing about dealing with an utterly ruthless Peer of Lant who possessed the means of sending an army through time. They wouldn’t even be able to imagine such a thing.
22. PROFESSOR MARCUS BROCK (1)
