Part 3 (2/2)

”I couldn't tell. We couldn't see that much from where we were; none of us really got that close. It was very-” He gestured. ”Forbidding.”

”I'd like to see it,” Tallchief said.

”n.o.body's leaving the compound today,” Belsnor said. ”Because now we can contact the satellite and get our instructions. And that comes first; that what really matters.” He spat into the weeds once more, deliberately and thoughtfully. And with accurate aim.

Dr. Milton Babble examined his wrist.w.a.tch and thought, It's four-thirty and I'm tired. Low blood sugar, he decided. It's always a sign of that when you get tired in the late afternoon. I should try to get some glucose into myself before it becomes serious. The brain, he thought, simply can't function without adequate blood sugar. Maybe, he thought, I'm becoming diabetic. That could be; I have the right genetic history.

”What's the matter, Babble?” Maggie Walsh said, seated beside him in the austere briefing hall of their meager settlement. ”Sick again?” She winked at him, which at once made him furious. ”What's it now? Are you wasting away, like Camille, from T.B.?”

”Hypoglycemia,” he said, studying his hand as it rested on the arm of his chair. ”Plus a certain amount of extra-pyramidal neuromuscular activity. Motor restlessness of the dystonic type. Very uncomfortable.” He hated the sensation: his thumb twitching in the familiar pellet-rolling motion, his tongue curling up within his mouth, dryness in his throat-dear G.o.d, he thought, is there no end of this?

Anyhow the herpes simplex kerat.i.tis which had afflicted him during the previous week had abated. He was glad of that (thank G.o.d).

”Your body is to you like what a house is for a woman,” Maggie Walsh said. ”You keep experiencing it as if it were an environment, rather than-”

”The somatic environment is one of the realest environments in which we live,” Babble said testily. ”It's our first environment, as infants, and then as we decline into old age, and the Form Destroyer corrodes our vitality and shape, we once against discover that it little matters what goes on in the so-called outside world when our somatic essence is in jeopardy.”

”Is this why you became a doctor?”

”It's more complex than a simple cause-and-effect relations.h.i.+p. That supposes a duality. My choice of vocations-”

”Pipe down over there,” Glen Belsnor yapped, pausing in his fiddlings. Before him rested the settlement's transmitter, and he had been trying for several hours to get it functioning. ”If you want to talk clear out.” Several other people in the hall added noisy agreement.

”Babble,” Ignatz Thugg said from the seat in which he sprawled, ”you're well-named.” He barked a canine-like laugh.

”You, too,” Tony Dunkelwelt said to Thugg.

”Pipe down!” Glen Belsnor yelled, his face red and steaming as he poked the innards of the transmitter: ”Or by G.o.d we'll never get our p.o.o.p-sheet from the friggin' satellite. If you don't shut up I'm going to come over there and take you apart instead of taking this ma.s.s of metallic guts apart. And I'd enjoy it.”

Babble rose, turned and left the hall.

In the cold, long sunlight of late afternoon he stood smoking his pipe (being careful not to start up any pyloric activity) and contemplated their situation. Our lives, he thought, are in the hands of little men like Belsnor; here, they rule. The kingdom of the one-eyed, he thought acidly, in which the blind are king. What a life.

Why did I come here? he asked himself. No answer immediately came, only a wail of confusion from within him: drifting shapes that complained and cried out like indignant patients in a charity ward. The shrill shapes plucked at him, drawing him back into the world of former times, into the restlessness of his last years on Orionus 17, back to the days with Margo, the last of his office nurses with whom he had conducted a long, inelegant affair, a misadventure which had ended up in a heap of tangled tragicomedy-both for him and for her. In the end she had left him ... or had she? Actually, he reflected, everyone leaves everyone when something as messy and jury-rigged as that terminates. I was lucky, he thought, to get out of it how and when I did. She could have made a lot more trouble. As it was, she had seriously jeopardized his physical health, just by protein depletion alone.

That's right, he thought. It's time for my wheat germ oil, my vitamin E. Must go to my quarters. And, while I'm there, I'll take a few glucose tablets to counterbalance my hypoglycemia. a.s.suming I don't pa.s.s out on the way. And if I did, who would care? What in fact would they do? I'm essential to their survival, whether they recognize it or not. I'm vital to them, but are they vital to me? Yes, in the sense that Glen Belsnor is; vital because they can do, or allegedly can do, skilled tasks necessary for the maintenance of this stupid little incestuous small town that we're running here. This pseudo-family that doesn't work as a family in any respect. Thanks to the meddlers from outside.

I'm going to have to tell Tallchief and-what's his name? Morley. Tell Tallchief and Morley and Morley's wife-who is not bad-looking at all-about the meddlers from outside, about the building which I have seen ... seen close enough to read the writing above the entrance. Which no one else has. Insofar as I know.

He started down the gravel path toward his quarters. As he came up onto the plastic porch of the living quarters he saw four people in a gathering together: Susie Smart, Maggie Walsh, Tallchief and Mr. Morley. Morley was talking, his tub-shaped middle protruding like a huge inguinal hernia. I wonder what he lives on, Babble said to himself. Potatoes, broiled steak, with ketchup on everything, and beer. You can always tell a beer drinker. They have the perforated facial skin, perforated where the hair grows, and the bags under their eyes. They look, as he looks, as if they have an edema puffing them out. And renal damage as well. And of course the ruddy skin.

A self-indulgent man, he thought, like Morley, doesn't in any way understand-can't understand-that he's pouring poisons into his body. Minute embolisms ... damage to critical areas of the brain. And yet they keep on, these oral types. Regression to a pre-reality testing stage. Maybe it's a misplaced biological survival mechanism: for the good of the species they weed themselves out. Leaving the women to more competent, and more advanced, male types. understand-that he's pouring poisons into his body. Minute embolisms ... damage to critical areas of the brain. And yet they keep on, these oral types. Regression to a pre-reality testing stage. Maybe it's a misplaced biological survival mechanism: for the good of the species they weed themselves out. Leaving the women to more competent, and more advanced, male types.

He walked up to the four of them, stood with his hands in his pockets, listening. Morley was relating the minutiae of a theological experience which he evidently had had. Or pretended to have had.

”...'my dear friend,' he called me. Obviously I mattered to him. He helped me with the reloading ... it took a long time and we talked. His voice was low but I could understand him perfectly. He never used any excess words and he could express himself perfectly; there was no mystery about it, like you sometimes hear. Anyhow, we loaded and talked. And he wanted to bless me. Why? Because-he said-I was exactly the kind of person who mattered to him. He was completely matter-of-fact about it; he simply stated it. 'You are the kind of person whom I think matters,' he said, or words to that effect. 'I'm proud of you,' he said. 'Your great love of animals, your compa.s.sion toward lower life forms, pervades your entire mentality. Compa.s.sion is the basis of the person who has risen from the confines of the Curse. A personality type like yours is exactly what we are looking for.'” Morley paused, then.

”Go on,” Maggie Walsh said, in a fascinated voice.

”And then he said a strange thing,” Morley said. ”He said, 'As I have saved you, saved your life, by my own compa.s.sion, I know that your own great capacity for compa.s.sion will enable you to save lives, both physically and spiritually, of others.' Presumably he meant here at Delmak-O.”

”But he didn't say,” Susie Smart said ”He didn't have to,” Morley said. ”I knew what he meant; I understood everything he said. In fact I could communicate a lot more clearly with him than with most of the people I've known. I don't mean any of you-h.e.l.l, I don't really know you, yet-but you see what I mean. There weren't any transcendental symbolic pa.s.sages, no metaphysical nonsense like they used to talk about before Specktowsky wrote The Book. Specktowsky was right; I can verify it on the basis of my own experiences with him. With the Walker.”

”Then you've seen it before,” Maggie Walsh said.

”Several times.”

Dr. Milton Babble opened his mouth and said, ”I've seen it seven times. And I encountered the Mentufacturer once. So if you add it together I've had eight experiences with the One True Deity.”

The four of them gazed at him with various expressions. Susie Smart looked skeptical: Maggie Walsh showed absolute disbelief; both Tallchief and Morley seemed relatively interested.

”And twice,” Babble said, ”with the Intercessor. So it's ten experiences in all. Throughout my whole life, of course.”

”From what you heard from Mr. Morley about his experience,” Tallchief said, ”did it sound similar to your own?”

Babble kicked at a pebble on the porch; it bounced away, struck the nearby wall, fell silent, then. ”Fairly much so. By and large. Yes, I think we can in some part accept what Morley says. And yet-” He hesitated meaningfully. ”I'm afraid I'm skeptical. Was it truly the Walker, Mr. Morley? Could it not have been a pa.s.sing itinerant laborer who wanted you to think he was the Walker? Had you thought of that? Oh, I'm not denying that the Walker appears again and again among us; my own experiences testify to that.”

”I know he was,” Morley said, looking angry, ”because of what he said about my cat.”

”Ah, your cat.” Babble smiled both within and without; he felt deep and hearty amus.e.m.e.nt transverse his circulatory system. ”So this is where the business about your 'great compa.s.sion for lower life forms' comes from.”

Looking nettled and even more angrily outraged Morley said, ”How would a pa.s.sing tramp know about my cat? Anyhow, there aren't any pa.s.sing tramps at Tekel Upharsin. Everybody works; that's what a kibbutz is.” He looked, now, hurt and unhappy.

The voice of Glen Belsnor dinned in the darkened distance behind them. ”Come on in! I've made contact with the G.o.ddam satellite! I'm about to have it run its audio tapes!”

Babble, as he started walking, said, ”I didn't think he could do it.” How good he felt, although he did not know exactly why. Something to do with Morley and his awe-inspiring account of meeting the Walker. Which now did not seem awe-inspiring after all. Once it had been scrupulously investigated, and by a person with adult, critical judgment.

The five of them entered the briefing hall and seated themselves among the others. From the speakers of Belsnor's radio equipment sharp static punctuated with random voice-noises sounded. The din hurt Babble's ears, but he said nothing. He displayed the formal attention which the technician had demanded.

”What we're picking up right now is a scatter track,” Belsnor informed them over the racket. ”The tape hasn't started to run yet; it won't do that until I give the satellite the right signal.”

”Start the tape,” Wade Frazer said.

”Yeah, Glen, start the tape.” Voices from here and there in the chamber.

”Okay,” Belsnor said. He reached out, touched control k.n.o.bs on the panel before him. Lights winked on and off as servo-a.s.sist mechanisms switched into activity aboard the satellite.

From the speakers a voice said, ”Greetings to the Delmak-O colony from General Treaton of Interplan West.”

”That's it,” Belsnor said. ”That's the tape.”

”Shut up, Belsnor. We're listening.”

”It can be run back any number of times,” Belsnor said.

”You have now completed your recruiting,” General Treaton of Interplan West said. ”This completion was antic.i.p.ated by us at Interplan R.A.V. to occur not later than the fourteenth of September, Terran statute time. First, I would like to explain why the Delmak-O colony was created, by whom and for what purpose. It is basically-” All at once the voice stopped. ”Wheeeeee,” the speakers blared. ”Ughhhhhh. Akkkkkkkkk.” Belsnor stared at the receiving gear with mute dismay. ”Ubbbbb,” the speakers said; static burst in, receded as Belsnor twisted dials, and then-silence.

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