Part 12

"Where did you see these two sets of summiteers?" Rod asked. "I gather it wasn't long ago."

"Just a few minutes ago," Spookie said. "It was at the big porthole thing--you know, where we transferred from the spaceship. Only they were going out--one set into one spaceship and the other into a second. It's just a hunch, of course, but I sort of got the impression that the wrong presidents were going back to Earth."

22 (AUG. 12, TUES.)

He who is wrapped in purple robes, With planets in His care, Had pity on the least of things Asleep upon a chair.

--William Butler Yeats

Maybe it was our high-class company, or maybe it was just that the Monolithians figured everything was going swimmingly for them. Whatever the reason, they treated us royally after Spookie Masters joined our little captive society.

The cuisine improved. Our jailers brought in cigarettes and cigars and fairly recent copies of _Harper's_ and _The New Yorker_. They rolled back a wall so Joy Linx could have a private bedroom and handed out blankets all around. They even brought in typewriters and stacks of copy paper. It was all quite cozy, except that we were still prisoners and that none of our captors ever spoke to us.

Spookie came out of the bathroom, wiping leftover lather off his face, and said, "What are they doing? I don't want to settle down here. We've got to find a way to bust out of this joint."

"Now," Rod said, "if that isn't an ace-high, triple-plated, razzle-dazzle idea, I've never heard one." He was having a second cup of our breakfast coffee. "And just how do you think we should carry out your splendid plan, Mr. Masters?"

"Cut it out, Rod," Spookie said. "I know I talk big. But have we explored all the possibilities? I suppose you've gone over this room with a fine-tooth comb, but how about Joy's? Maybe there's some way out from there."

"Miss Linx is still enjoying her beauty sleep," Rod said. "But it's a thought. Let's rout her out."

But the door opened and Joy said, "I heard that, you fiends. First respectable night's sleep I had, too, since I was thrown in among you great big leering men."

"Don't lump me in with these raffish reporters, ma'am," Spookie said. "I'm the soul of honor."

"I treat that remark with the doubt it deserves," Joy said. "But all this gay banter aside, men, I've been tinkering with a thought. Were you watching when they opened up the wall to make my room? Well, I was. There was a certain way our woolly friend touched the wall. Maybe if we felt around on the other side in here...."

We gave the wall a thorough going-over, fingering it, rapping on it and occasionally kicking it in frustration. Just as we were about to give up, it rolled back, revealing another room, bare except for some crates. There was a door to the corridor and Spookie went to it quickly. It opened easily and he peered out through a crack.

"Nobody out there," he said. "Let's go!"

I had opened the only one of the crates whose lid wasn't fastened down. It was filled nearly to the top with flat, black boxes about the size of a paperback book. I had no idea what they were but slipped several into my jacket pockets before following the others into the corridor.

It was still empty after we'd slunk quite a distance from our plush prison. We went down the spiral ramp, trying to head back to the press room, on the theory that we'd be safer among our own kind--though it was obvious now that every Earthman aboard was at the mercy of the Monolithians. Rod had our story and his chief interest at the moment was finding a way to file it to Earth uncensored.

Spookie went first, then Rod, followed by Joy. I brought up the rear.

I hadn't tied my shoes and they were flopping against the bare floor, making a racket. I stopped to tie them and the others disappeared around the bend.

Before I could catch up with them a Monolithian had caught me.

For a fraction of a second I didn't recognize him. He'd come up quietly behind me and just stood there until I noticed him.

"Hello, Sam," he said. "No, don't get up."

I remained on one knee and automatically finished the knot I was making as I looked up.

The fraction of a second over, I saw who it was. Me.

I tried to think of something to do or say, but all I could do was stare in fascination. He looked just a trifle wrong, but again I realized almost immediately that this was only because I was seeing not the mirror image I was used to, but an exact, unreversed duplicate.

He was looking at me with an almost hypnotic stare. My mind began to falter, like a car engine with bad cylinders.

"Up now, but slowly," my Monolithian duplicate said. He didn't seem to be armed. He was dressed exactly as I was, in jacket and slacks.

I got to my feet, unable to look away from his eyes.

"You are powerless to do anything except what I tell you," he said. It was true. I was only half thinking now, my attention concentrated on this superbly confident other self of mine. Somewhere among the missing cylinders, however, was my recollection that this was the creature who had taken my place in bed with Mae. My head hurt at the thought, coupled with his proximity. I longed to take him by the neck and throttle him until he was dead, dead, dead. But I was powerless to move except as he directed.

Then Joy came back around the bend behind him. I threw myself against him and he fell off balance. She had only a few seconds to take in the situation. She swung up her handbag and gave him a good clout on the head. He crumpled to the floor. She hit him again, on the downswing, and the sharp metal corner of her bag banged into his skull. He was out.

"Thanks, Joy. You're a lifesaver."

"Maybe," she said. "If we don't get out of here we'll both be more like wads of second-hand chewing gum. What are you _doing_?"

I'd pulled my unconscious image to a sitting position against the wall of the corridor and was going through his pockets.

"Little identity switch," I told her.

He had nothing at all in his inside breast pocket, but there was a clip-on pencil and a small notebook in his shirt pocket. I exchanged them for the little notebook and clip-on pencil I keep in the same place. I exchanged wallets, too, not without a pang for the eighty-odd dollars in expense money that was in mine. I put off examining his. For good measure I switched the handkerchiefs we both carried in our right hip pockets and the few coins in the change pockets of our jackets.

"Looks like a fair exchange," Joy said. "Now what? Can't we hurry up?"

"Where are the others?"

"I don't know. I came back when I missed you."

I found a door that opened and pulled my duplicate into the room. It was an empty cabin, obviously unused. I propped him against a chair and Joy said, "Shall I give him another whack?"

"No, let's just leave him. We don't want to kill the guy. He looks as if he'll be out for quite a while."

We decided to head for the landing stage. On the way I asked Joy about something that had been puzzling me: "Just how did you know which one of us to hit?"

She thought for a moment. "Intuition, I guess. You were the one who was attacking--using physical violence--so you couldn't have been the Monolithian. He would have been armed with one of his super weapons. I didn't really think about it." She looked at me and said, apparently only half-jokingly, "You _are_ you, aren't you?"

My head was beginning to throb again. "I hope so."

We reached the big open area near the landing stage.

"This is where we have to look very matter-of-fact," I told Joy. "I have a small hunch. Just play it by ear."

There were only a few people near the transparent airlock. All but one of them wore the Monolithian woolen cloaks. I didn't recognize the man dressed in Earth clothing. He certainly wasn't one of the reporters.

Joy and I tried to stroll nonchalantly toward the airlock. I had only the vaguest of plans for finding out as subtly as possible when the next flight--if any--left for Earth.

One of the cloaked men came toward us. He smiled. "Mr. Kent?"

"That's right."

"Your ID card, please."

I handed him the wallet I'd appropriated. He unfolded it and looked for a long few seconds at the White House card under the cellophane window. Then he handed the wallet back.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Your pilot is ready, as arranged. Will the lady be accompanying you?"

"Yes," I said. "My secretary, Miss Linx." The throb in my head was worse. I supposed it was the tension.

"Okay, Sam." He winked. He turned and gave an order. The inner pane of the airlock rose swiftly and a tiny craft, no more than three times the size of my Volkswagen, rolled out from the side. Joy and I walked toward it. So did the one man in Earth clothing. Without a glance at us, he went into the pilot's compartment forward.

Joy and I had reached the steps leading to the passenger space aft when the Monolithian in the cloak said, "One last thing, Mr. Kent. The last formality."

Throb-throb, went my head. Joy looked at me questioningly and put her hand inside my elbow. I squeezed it to my body.

"All right," I said as if annoyed. "Let's get it over with."

There was just the slightest trace of suspicion in his eyes as he said, "What word from you shall I send to our colleagues?"

The throbbing in my skull grew more intense. "Duty," I said, not knowing why. But I said it firmly.

The Monolithian nodded. "And--?"

"Duty and dedication," I said without hesitation. My head felt as if Buddy Rich and Zutty Singleton and Gene Krupa were all pounding away inside. I was genuinely annoyed now. "Let's go," I said sharply. "There's no time to lose."

"You're right," the Monolithian said. Joy and I got in and he went up to the pilot, his suspicions apparently at rest, and told him, "Take Mr. Kent and Miss Linx to Earth."

23 (AUG. 13, WED.)

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

--Oscar Wilde

The pilot said virtually nothing to us on the long trip, except that during the final orbital glide he asked me where I wanted to get out. I said I'd prefer it to be as close as possible to downtown Washington. His cockpit was completely isolated from the passenger compartment and we communicated by intercom. I was sure he could hear everything Joy and I said, so we talked only inconsequentials and spent quite a bit of the time dozing in our comfortable lounge chairs.

The pilot took me at my word and landed on the mall near the Washington Monument. It was just getting dark.

He said "Duty" and I replied "Duty and dedication." He took off again without another word.

Joy and I watched his silent climb into the sky. So did a few pedestrians and the group of people waiting to go up to the Monument. A policeman started toward us, not running but with a purposeful walk, so I hailed a cab and we got away from there.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

"White House," I said, to give him some place to head for. He drove off. The cop decided not to chase us.

Joy said, "We can't go to the White House. We'd be walking right into their jaws."

"I know," I said. "But if they were after us we'd never have got this far. Our dutiful pilot would have seen to that."

"They must have found the fake Sam Kent by now," Joy said. "They can't still think you're him. Something's fishy."

"You're right, of course. We'd better catch up on what's been going on."

"We'll go to my place," Joy said. She gave the driver a South-East address and said to me, "We can listen to the newscasts and pick up the papers on the way."

Joy lived in a top-floor apartment in a new building from which you could see the dome of the Capitol.

"There's the radio and TV and there's something in the cabinet over the sink in the kitchen if you want to make a drink," she said. "Make yourself at home. I'm going to take a shower and get into some different clothes. I've been in this outfit so long it feels like a uniform."

I'd bought the _Post_, the _Star_, the _News_, the _Baltimore Sun_ and the _New York Times_. I dropped them and myself on the couch and turned on the radio. She'd had it tuned to WGMS and for a while I got nothing but good music. I looked over the front pages to muted sounds of Mozart and the bathroom shower.

The morning papers, the _Post_ and _Times_, had similar headlines, something to the effect that a blueprint for interplanetary peace had been charted at the Ultra summit conference.

The afternoon papers headlined the return to Earth of the summiteers. The tabloid _News_ said all over its front page:

GOV BACK FROM SPACE; HAILS SUMMIT TALK AS 'TRIUMPH FOR MANKIND'

The conservative _Star_ gave it an eight-column banner:

WORLD LEADERS RETURN FROM ULTRA; CONFERENCE WITH MONOLITHIANS SEEN INSURING GENERATIONS OF PEACE

I looked in vain for the story Rod Harris and I had written, or for anything like it. There was no hint anywhere that the threat of El Spaniola had been a hoax and certainly no indication that the President and his fellow chiefs of state were any different than before they'd left for Ultra.

Nor was there any word about Gov's press secretary being missing. In fact there were several quotes from good old Samuel L. C. Kent, saying in substance that there was nothing that could be added to what was in the official statements and giving a few homey details about how the President had enjoyed his first trip into space.

"He had a fine time," I was quoted as saying at Dulles International Airport, where the spaceships had landed on their return from Ultra, "and he looks forward to making another trip--perhaps even to Monolithia itself after he leaves the White House."

What this meant, of course, was that my double had got loose in time to rejoin the other duplicated Earthpeople before they got back to Washington. It also meant that the Monolithians had known who I was during my flight back with Joy and that they had a good reason for not stopping us. I wondered what that reason was.

The throbbing in my head began again.

Joy came out of the bathroom wearing an extremely attractive wrapper, belted rather insecurely at the waist. She'd washed her hair and had combed it straight back in a pony-tail. She wore no makeup except lipstick and had left off her glasses. She was barefoot and desirable. I wanted to kiss her.

"Well," she said, "that's a lot better. Nothing like getting rid of the grime of two planets. What, no drink, Mr. Sam? You _are_ a dedicated one."

"Do something for me, Joy. Call my home and ask for me. If I'm not there make some excuse and hang up."

"All right." She went to the phone, "And if you are there?"

"Hang up anyway."

She dialed the Bethesda number. It answered almost immediately.

"Hello," I heard her say; "is Jim there?... James Fairchild.... Oh, isn't this Empire 3-6573?... I'm sorry; I must have the wrong number." She put the phone down and said to me, "It was you."

Throb-throb. My head again. It wasn't a pain but an insistent hammering in the center of my skull.

"That means Mae's with ... him," I said. "And she thinks it's me again."

"Poor Sam. I'm going to make you a good stiff Scotch. You need it."

"I need something." Maybe cold water would help. "I think I'll take a shower while you fix the drinks. It's awfully hot."

"Help yourself. The folded towel is the dry one."

I took off my jacket and dropped it on the couch. In the bathroom I noticed that Joy squeezed her toothpaste tube from the middle, just like Mae. She had various wispy nylon things drying on racks and used a perfume called _Suivez-moi_. I picked up the bottle and sniffed it. Throb-throb.

I turned on the shower full cold, undressed and stood under it. The pounding in my head eased. Shivering, I turned the handle toward hot and soaped.

When I emerged, Joy had put my jacket away and two tall drinks stood on the coffee table in front of the couch.

"Feel better?" she asked.

"Much." I sat down beside her and took a big swallow. She handed me a lit cigarette. It had lipstick traces on the filter end. Throb-throb.

"I prefer my lipstick firsthand," I said. I put the cigarette down and pulled her toward me. Her eyes looked into mine, then closed. I kissed her. The scent of _Suivez-moi_ and the softness of her lips and body made the room tilt.

Her nails dug through my shirt into my back. Her lips went to my ear and she whispered, "Oh, Sam. I've wanted this for so long!"

Throb-throb. I was torn between two desires. This enchanting woman, whispering in my ear, her single garment--for that's all she wore--slipping off her shoulders, was a temptation that Sam Kent, Earthman, could not have resisted.

But the throbbing inside my skull reminded me that I was more than that. I was pseudo-Sam, the Monolithian man, bent on a greater mission. Duty and dedication were mine. I was no mere single entity. I was one of a group--one of many, all devoted to the same ideal. The distractions of Earth were nothing to me and easy to deny. I pushed Joy away from me. The throbs had become stabbing pains.

"A typewriter," I said flatly. "I require a typewriter."

Joy sat up, pulling her wrapper around her. Her eyes, which a moment ago were melting, had grown cold.

"You want _what_?" she said icily.

"You heard me, Earthwoman," I said. "A typewriter. At once!"

Joy stood up. She gave me a look of hatred and went to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

I found Joy's portable in its case on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. I set it up on the coffee table, rolled a sheet into it and thought for a moment.

Then, spurred by pain, I typed:

"Now here on Earth do I declare myself, racked and driven by motives outside my understanding, to be not what I seem, nor yet entirely what I am. Blessed is he who knows himself wholly--"

I stopped typing. I wasn't saying it. I opened the window wide and shouted toward the Capitol:

"Hear this! The hour approaches! Mend your ways lest the evil consequences overtake you! Hear me, Earthlings! You are all a part of the greater scheme and each must take the responsibility. Hark, before it is too late!"

"Shut up, you drunk," said a voice from below.

I slammed the window and picked up the phone. "Give me Western Union, I want to send a telegram.... Take this down and send it to the FBI and the CIA: This is bigger than your spies and your communist agents. Let me put you wise to an interstellar conspiracy. Drop everything else and arrest the President of the United States.... Who? The supervisor? Get off the line, I'm dictating a vital telegram.... I'll tell you who I am when I get to the signature.... Well, nuts to you, Madam."

I hung up and ran into the kitchen. I turned on the cold water and stuck my head under the faucet. It eased the pain. I picked up the bottle of Scotch and swallowed three times, then ran gasping back to the telephone.

I dialed the _Washington Post_'s number and asked for the city desk.

"Hello? Stop the presses! Tear out the front page! I've got a scoop for you. SCOOP. Take this down:

"I, Joe Spaceman, have defected from the Monolithians. You can quote me on that. You got that so far?... What the hell do you mean, put it in a letter? You think I'm crazy?... Listen, you imbecile, if you don't know an exclusive when you hear it, you'd better go back to journalism school."

I hung up on him, the jerk, and went back to the typewriter.

"Dear Drew Pearson: Maybe you can wake up the world. It's sleeping on the brink. The vastest most incredible conspiracy in history is being perpetrated under the noses of the decent folk...."

There was a knock at the hall door. As I turned to tell whoever it was to go away, Joy flew out of her bedroom and opened it.

Spookie Masters came in, patted Joy on the shoulder and strode over to me. I got up.

"You can tell them, Spookie!" I said. "Go on television and tell them all. There's no time to lose. Tell them how--"

Spookie pulled back his arm and I saw his fist coming at my chin.

24 (AUG. 14, THURS.)

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, Or but a wandering voice?

--Wordsworth

4:45 A.M. My head was no longer throbbing when I came to, but my jaw ached and my mouth tasted of old blood.

I was lying on the couch, my arms tied behind me and my feet fastened together at the ankles with my own belt.

I could hear Spookie and Joy talking in the tiny kitchen. It was dark outside, with just a tinge of dawn in the sky.

I wasn't gagged, so I said "Hey."

"Aha," Spookie said, looking around the doorway. "Our sleeper awakes. Who do you think you are now, Sam? Our old pal Kent or the King of the Outer Planets?"

"Damn you," I said. "Untie me."

"Maybe later. You're too much for us Earthlings to take chances with. You were really way out, little chum."

"I'm sorry," I said, beginning to remember.

"You'd better be," Joy said from around the corner. "You were absolutely outrageous. I'm making coffee. Want some?"

"Yes, please. How did Spookie get here? I thought he was still on Ultra."

"They've got a very efficient shuttle service," Spookie said. "They decided it'd be better to ship me back than to get themselves bad publicity by keeping me prisoner."

"Tell Sam how you threatened them," Joy said.

"With the undying wrath of the Spookie Masters Fan Club," Spookie said. "Three and a half million anti-Monolithians was more than they were willing to risk--especially teen-agers, who are inclined to be extreme."

"What an ego," I said. "Did Rod Harris come back with you?"

"He did. I left him at the AP, busting to file a story."

"How come they let him go?"

"My influence, I think," Spookie said. "You're sure full of questions for a reporter without a notebook."

"How did you get here? You didn't answer that one."

"I was anxious about Joy, naturally. I called her up and she told me she had a madman in her living room. Maidens in distress are my specialty."