More Things in Heaven Read online

  I comforted myself with the thought that logically he would be looking for Carmen along with everyone else. And it might, I reasoned, be better if he found her without my prompting. Last night she had said to me, “You don’t own me.”

  Which had suddenly made it clear that I wanted to. The next thing I intended to say to Senorita Carmen Iglesias was: “Will you marry me?” In the terrible new universe I saw looming before me I desperately wanted to have and keep someone like her, who was not utterly committed to the falsehoods of an arbitrary and outmoded “reality.”

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  Suppose an ant, immensely proud other race’s vast public works, mastery of building techniques, and the art of farming and domesticating other insects, were suddenly to become aware of the existence of man: she would feel very much as I felt now.

  I had been picking at my breakfast while thinking along these lines. Abruptly I could endure it no longer. I pushed back my plate, picked up the forced-sleep capsules, and went to fetch a glass of water to wash them down.

  After forced-sleep, at least one could not remember what one had dreamed.

  It had struck me belatedly that leaving my hotel in broad daylight in a UN car was apt to wreck my chances of persuading people I’d gone down to Chile for a day or two. Fortunately the same point must have occurred to Suvorov; the car he sent had no insignia and the driver wasn’t wearing a uniform. He was a taciturn local man whose Indian ancestry showed in his long solemn face.

  It was already possible to sense the effect of the release about Starventure this morning. There was an indefinable aura of gloom over the city. The municipal banners were still up in the streets, against the time of the heroes’ welcome which had been planned for the crew, but people were pretending not to notice them as they walked below. And at the point where the road to the spaceport branched off the highway, there was something new: a police checkpoint at which five or six cars were lined up while their drivers expostulated with the offi

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  cials in charge. My driver flashed an authorization card and we were let through, the target of curious stares. I kept my head down and hoped no one would recognize me.

  Either Suvorov hadn’t found the necessary hour to spare for a dose of forced-sleep, or he’d taken the stuff three days running and passed the point at which it remained effective. I suspected the latter, because last night he had complained to Brandt about the noise we were making while he was trying to rest. On the fourth day one was supposed to have twelve hours’ natural sleep to catch up, and he'd obviously not managed it.

  I wasn’t taken to his office, but to a confer- v ence room in the same block. There were about a dozen people present altogether, including Suvorov, whose ghastly drawn face was the first thing to strike me. Next to him was General Cassiano, a plump sallow Italian with a small mustache and Imperial beard; he was in overall command of the starship base, and I’d met him a couple of times during the launch preparations two years ago. I also recognized Lenister and a woman called Doris Quantrell whom 1 had once interviewed at Columbia when I was doing a book on recent developments in psychology. There was the woman whose conference Suvorov had interrupted for us last night, a man in spaceservice uniform whose collar bore the caduceus tags of the medical branch, and a number of others.

  I had the immediate impression I’d walked into the middle of a violent argument. Cassiano’s words confirmed that.

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  “Ah, Mr. Drummond! We’ve met before, of course, haven’t we? Take the chair at the end of the table, will you? We were just discussing the matter of this—ah—invitation which General Suvorov extended to you.”

  I sat down as directed, looking from face to face around the oblong table which extended virtually the whole length of the room. I could tell pretty clearly, just by glancing at them, which of these people had been raising objections.

  "Correction,” I said. “The suggestion was mine, and I made it the price of my cooperation in concealing the facts about what’s happened up at Starventure. ”

  Doris Quantrell stiffened and threw a venomous glare at Suvorov. He didn’t notice. I imagined he was having to concentrate exclusively on staying awake.

  “General Cassiano!” she snapped. “We’d already agreed that this was all going to be kept secret! Nothing about it was to be revealed to the crew’s families—least of all to a man who is also a reporter!”

  “Doris, I've told you before,” Lenister cut in. “It isn’t enough simply to keep our mouths shut. People are getting suspicious, and who can blame them for that? We were damned lucky that Drummond was available, and willing to help us out. He’s not just Leon Drummond’s brother, and he’s not just a reporter—he’s won the Kalinga Prize for science writing, and he has a reputation which will do a great deal to damp down these wild rumors which are flying around.”

  “On that score I don’t think there’s much

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  room for argument,” Cassiano said. "If you’ll permit me, I’ll take your more technical objections later, Dr. Quantrell. Meantime, may we hear from Major Kamensky?”

  The man with the caduceus collar-tabs turned to me. “Have you flown space before, Mr. Drummond?”

  “Yes, a couple of times,” I said. “I have about a hundred hours’ space experience altogether. The first time was about five years ago, just after my brother was hired to work on Starven- ture. The second was three years back, during the assembly of the hull.”

  “Did you suffer any vertigo, nausea, bone softening or impairment of spatial orientation?” “None at all.”

  “And since you last flew space have you suffered from any serious injuries or diseases which required hospitalization or extensive medical treatment?”

  “No, I’ve enjoyed excellent health.”

  Kamensky glanced at Cassiano. “I reserve the right to change my mind after I’ve had a chance to give Mr. Drummond a proper examination, but at this stage I have no objection in principle to his flying space.”

  “Good—thank you.” Cassiano shifted in his chair. “Now let’s hear from you, Dr. Lenister. I gather you’re strongly in favor of this proposal.” “Definitely!” Lenister hunched forward, once again wiping his glasses—it seemed to be a nervous habit with him. “I don’t know what’s got into Doris. If I hadn’t been so desperately preoccupied, I’d have realized much sooner that we needed a convincing cover story to fool the

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  public. I’m delighted with what Drummond and his colleague have done for us. ”

  “What’s that got to do with it?" snapped Doris Quantrell. “He may be hell with jets when it comes to journalism, but that’s no reason to let him go up to Starventure! Suvorov damned well ought to have consulted us beforehand!"

  Cassiano made to say something, but changed his mind and let Lenister answer direct.

  “Then you just haven’t been listening, Doris— that’s all I can say. I want data, and so should you! I want information about what’s going on in those minds! Drummond here is a close relative of one of the crew; he’s had a scientific education; he’s experienced in meeting strangers and assessing them, and communicating his reaction in writing or on tape. I want to know what happens when someone with this sort of background confronts a member of the crew.”

  “You want! You want!” Dr. Quantrell said scornfully. “So I’ll tell you what I want! I want to cure you of this absurd bee in your bonnet about ‘transfer of personality into another bodily form’—do I quote you correctly, Doctor Lenister? I want us to do something practical and constructive to protect ourselves against the alien monsters which are trying to use the blockheadedness of people like you as a Trojan horse for their attack on this planet!"

  So that was what the real argument was about. Not about me at all, nor about Suvorov’s unauthorized action
. A chill of terror passed down my spine.

  XIII

  SUDDENLY LENISTER lost control. His face turned beet-red, and he clamped his hands on the edge of the table so violently that I had wild visions of him breaking pieces out of the wood and crushing them to dust. For several seconds he was too choked with fury to speak. Then he forced out words aimed at Cassiano like bullets from a gun.

  “Get rid of this goddamned woman! Get her off this project before I break her arrogant neck! She’s so stuffed with phobias no one else around here can hope to get any work done! How the hell do you expect us to get what we want out of Drummond when she’s deliberately setting out to bias his mind? I can’t stand it a moment longer—I’m getting the hell out!"

  He jumped to his feet so quickly that his chair overturned and crashed on the floor behind him, stormed toward the door, ignoring the attempts of Kamensky and others to intercept him, and went out cursing in a horrible subdued monotone.

  There was a frozen pause. Everyone looked at Cassiano, on whose olive-sallow face beads of perspiration were standing out.

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  “I'm going to recess this conference for an hour,” he said at last. “I can hardly call Dr. Lenister’s behavior constructive, but on the other hand I feel as he does, Dr. Quantrell, that you’re deliberately trying to provoke him. Major Kamensky!”

  The doctor looked up.

  “Before we reassemble, I want you to administer tranquilizers to both Dr. Quantrell and Dr. Lenister. I’m making that a condition of their rejoining us—be quiet, Dr. Quantrell!" he added sharply as he saw her framing an objection. “I mean exactly what I say: you come back tranquilized or not at all! I am sick of your wrangling with Lenister. I am also sick of your childish insistence on getting your own way because of your sex.”

  It was Dr. Quantrell’s turn to jump to her feet and march out. Nobody tried to stop her. There was another interval of silence. I looked at Suvorov; he had leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, and I judged that his exhaustion had finally caught up with him.

  I couldn’t say I was greatly surprised by the scene I’d just witnessed. I’d had a hint of the emotional strain these people must be undergoing in my hotel room this morning. A solid week of that kind of pressure, and you’d expect the cracks to show.

  The woman on whose meeting Suvorov had burst in last night, who was sitting on Kamensky’s left and had not spoken since I came in, now stirred and made to catch Cassiano’s eye. He said, “Yes, Miss Tobolkin?”

  Automatically my memory glossed the name:

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  Tatiana Tobolkin, Institute of Aerobotany—that incredible place in Siberia where they had duplicated forty square miles of the surface of Mars so that Martian vegetation could be studied at leisure and Earthly plants could be adapted to the hostile environment. I’d always meant to visit it, and somehow never found the time.

  “I’m opposed to any recess,” Miss Tobolkin said in strongly accented English. “Dr. Quantrell has wrecked the original idea. As I understand it, the intention was to find out whether Mr. Drummond’s spontaneous reaction to the creature we've identified as his brother supported Dr. Lenister’s view that we have a transfer of personality into another body, or Dr. Quantrell’s belief in malevolent alien invaders. We must make a decision in principle at once, and I wish to state that despite what has happened the proposed confrontation remains both desirable and useful. If Mr. Drummond would now be prejudiced, then we must invite some other close relative of the crew with a sufficiently resilient personality to accept the shock. ”

  “Then we’ll vote," Cassiano said. “We’re still a quorum. Those who agree with Miss Tobolkin, please.”

  Suvorov moved to put his right elbow on the table and raised his hand. It shook like a leaf in the wind. After a moment of hesitation Kamensky copied him, and so did all but two of the others.

  “Very well,” Cassiano said. “We make our decision now in spite of the absence of Doctors Quantrell and Lenister.”

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  “Oughtn’t we to hear what Mr. Drummond thinks?” Suvorov suggested in a hoarse voice. “He comes fresh to the problem as of last night. We’ve been getting stale.”

  “Agreed.” Cassiano nodded. “Mr. Drummond, does what’s happened since you came in need any explanation, or is it quite plain what’s been going on?”

  I cleared my throat. The chill of terror was still upon me; I felt like a walking corpse.

  I said, “Well, you don't have to explain that there are two schools of thought here. Dr. Lenister thinks the minds—the personalities —of the crew are still present in their altered bodies. I’ve been struggling with that idea ever since last night, and because I don’t see any way this could be managed right now it seems to me just as reasonable to go along with Dr. Quantrell.”

  “Ah, but that involves the assumption that the aliens responsible have so deep an understanding of human psychology that they can adopt individual personality patterns.” As though hauling his voice up from a deep well, Suvorov raised the counterargument. “It’s not consistent to argue that they would then have to present themselves to us in their own bodies."

  “That’s Lenister’s strongest point,” Cassiano said. “It does seem logical to assume that imitating the physical shape of a man would be easier than imitating his personality. Yet—making allowances for the difficulty of communication—the psychologists who prepared the profiles of the crew before departure have one by

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  one come around to the belief that there’s been a real continuity of identity.”

  I shook my head. “I'm out of my depth,” I muttered. “So before making up my mind, could I just ask one or two more questions?”

  “One or two!" Cassiano snorted. “You’re very considerate, Mr. Drummond. If I were you. I’d want to put one or two thousand questions!” He settled more comfortably in his chair and gestured for me to go ahead.

  “Well, let’s assume that these aliens have in fact made an exchange of bodies: what conceivable purpose could they have for doing it?”

  The man facing Kamensky, a lean type with a lantern jaw, indicated his willingness to tackle that.

  “I’m Joost van Camp, Mr. Drummond—University of Leyden. I don’t believe we’ve met. Ah . . .” He hesitated. “Well, at present we’re considering the idea that the stories of members of the starship crew being seen on Earth have a basis in fact: you’re one of the people concerned, I gather. In that case, it would follow that the aliens have never noticed us before, and have as it were borrowed the bodies of the crew so that they can look our planet over at first hand.” “Fair enough,” I nodded. “But does this imply that they’re benevolent or hostile?"

  Dr. van Camp spread his hands. “What have we to go on? So far they haven’t done us any harm—unless you count the psychological shock suffered by the crew. But this need not indicate that they’re well disposed toward us; it may only indicate caution, stemming from ignorance of our capabilities relative to their own.”

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  “Are the crew”—I hunted for another word, but couldn’t find one, and the others were waiting for me—“satisfied with the bodies they’ve been given?”

  Miss Tobolkin leaned forward. “This is what's so extraordinary,” she said. “It seems that they are. In fact, making allowance for our ignorance of any kind of biology bar Terran and Martian, I’d be prepared to say that the bodies have been specially constructed to make the occupants comfortable.”

  “Constructed?” I echoed in astonishment. “You mean they aren’t organic?”

  “Organic, of course!” She made an impatient gesture. “But they have several traits which suggest artificiality.”

  “For instance?”

  “You know, I imagine, that these creatures aboard Starventure bre
athe oxygen and exhale COa, can eat normal food with some extra trace elements, and drink water—in prodigious quantities, by the way. But all the trace elements we’ve so far tracked through the metabolism appear to be required in order to provide faculties superior to the human. In particular the nerve tissue, including the eyes which can see much further into the short end of the spectrum than we can, demands about ninety per cent of the unusual substances we’ve listed. Without going into excessive detail, I feel we must be dealing with the end product of a modification from a starting point rooted in a biology quite different from any we’re familiar with."

  “Even more crucial,” put in van Camp, “is the absence of a reproductive system.”

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  Miss Tobolkin gave a vigorous nod of agreement.

  “Dr. van Camp,” I said when I’d digested the last remarks, “are you assuming that—if the crew’s minds are in alien bodies—there are alien minds in the crew’s bodies, correspondingly, walking around here on Earth?”

  “If you can come up with a better working hypothesis,” he answered in an unhappy voice, “we’d be delighted to learn of it.”

  “Could these creatures possibly come from the Alpha Centauri system?”

  “No.” Miss Tobolkin gave the word great emphasis. “Not unless every record aboard the ship has been falsified—which admittedly isn’t impossible. Landings were made just as we announced to the public, on two small planets and a number of satellites and asteroids, and all of them were found to be barren. One of the planets will probably develop life in a few million years because it has large pools of oily carbon-based compounds, but there’s naturally no free oxygen and it’s further from its sun than Mars.”

  “Then where the hell do they come from? Hyperspace?”

  “We’re still arguing about that,” van Camp shrugged. “It has been suggested. I don’t pretend to follow the reasoning, because this isn’t my field, but apparently it can be shown mathematically that our space might prove to be a variant of a greater space, and the latter ought to permit the kind of energy processes which life depends on. It might even be a more efficient setting for life.”