Part 10 (2/2)

”Well, it almost worked,” said Pell. ”I must admit I had quite a time fighting off your commands. But, you see, I knew you'd gotten to Ciel somehow when she called me up to make the date this evening. She spoke of going out to the terrace at the Stardust Cafe. It was a little odd that she should speak of the terrace like that, out of a clear sky--and I wondered why it should be on her mind. Then it struck me that neither of us had ever noticed a terrace there, and Ciel must have some special reason for knowing about it.

”She did, of course--she'd been instructed to get me out there where your boys could slap a freezer on me. So I started guessing with that hunch to work on. Everything more or less fell into place after that. It was pretty certain that they'd try to make a loyal Supremist out of me, too, and that's when I took that little precaution I mentioned to you.”

”What precaution?”

Pell smiled. ”I had Marco the mentalist hypnotize me and give me a rather special post-hypnotic command. He ordered me not to believe any _subsequent_ post-hypnotic commands. That's why your conditioning didn't work on me.”

Larkin could find no words; he just stared.

”Think about it, Larkin,” said Pell. ”Think hard. Maybe you'd convinced yourself you were doing good, but your purpose was still tyranny. And like any tyranny it contained the means of its own destruction. It always works out that way, Larkin--maybe it's a law, or something.”

It had been a long speech for Pell, practically an oration. He was, after all, a cop, not a philosopher. Just a guy trying to get along.

Just an ordinary citizen whose name was legion, looking at his wife now and waiting with what patience he could find for the time when she would be cleared of the poisonous doctrine that any one race or group or even species was supreme.

He was thinking, too, that the trial would keep him busy as the very devil and that they _still_ wouldn't get to that vacation and second honeymoon for a long time....

That, considering everything, was not too much to put up with.

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