Chapter IX

The nightmares started in Beirut. Stan's apartment was a modern one, just a block from the American University. He had opened the wood-slat Venetian blinds and had gone to bed, feeling dead tired. It was late August and things had not gone too well. Agents had disappeared. Fusion packages had disappeared from their hiding places.

But worries could not compete with physical exhaustion. He was asleep as soon as he hit the pillow.

The nightmares were terrifying. He was no longer Stanley Martin, patriotic agent for the planet Thusca. He was 17 years old once more, playing in the city streets of Chicago and fighting in a pillow fight with his older brother and running errands for his mother or watching her while she made meat loaf and took loaves of freshly baked bread from the ovens.

And then there was the smell of printing ink on freshly printed papers and reporters yelling "Copy boy!" at him and the twice weekly trips to the stockyards to pick up the live-stock reports.

The stockyards. He had stopped by an alley one morning and three men had jumped him, slugging him in the stomach and kidneys and hitting ... hitting ... hitting....

He woke up, shaking. His pajamas and the bed sheets were soaked with perspiration. He sat on the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands.

He had dreamt that he was an ape.

He got up and went to the bathroom for a glass of water. He didn't go back to sleep.

The nightmare the next night was different. Once again he saw two small French boys playing in the street. One moment, thin, bandy-legged kids in short pants and berets ... the next, two blazing torches that crumpled silently to the asphalt.

And then there was the hideous, horribly shrill screaming of Reynolds when Tanner had played the heat gun over him. The terrible screaming that Stan knew would haunt him for years....

He woke up again, rolled to the side of the bed, and was sick.

The nightmares, the goddamned nightmares.... He fumbled for matches and cigarettes on the bed table. The tiny flame of the match shook nervously in the gloom of the bedroom.

He _had_ to stop them, if it meant dosing himself with drugs before he went to bed. He couldn't stand the dreams, he couldn't take the false memories that kept cropping up.

The next night he made up his mind. There were pieces still missing from the puzzle of who he was. There were things, he felt sure, that Tanner had never told him. Things, no doubt, that the high command had felt he wasn't ready to know yet.

A good agent wouldn't question higher authority, he thought slowly, sweating. But he _had_ to know them! He had to know the answers, he had to know about his first 25 years of life.

And there was one person who might be able to give him some information. One person who had once called him a traitor, who had implied he was a renegade and had been conditioned. One person who knew things about himself that he didn't.

The girl, Avis.

Eventually, he had to find her--to kill her. But right now, he wanted to find her to get information.

* * * * *

He got dressed, set the dial of the transport-hoop for London and stepped through. Tanner was waiting for him on the other side.

"Where is she?" Stan asked.

Tanner raised his eyebrows. "The North American continent. Chicago."

"Exactly where?"

"I don't know ... exactly. We've been trying to trace the radiations from the fusion package but it keeps moving about the city." Tanner grimaced. "We haven't been successful in following it. We've lost quite a number of agents trying to follow it, as you know."

He stood up and fished in his pocket for a pipe and a small pouch of tobacco. He looked very casual, very urbane, Stan thought.

"You going after her, Martin?"

"That's right--I'm going after her."

Tanner studied him curiously.

"You're taking a risk. Our agents will locate her sooner or later."

"They haven't so far," Stan said sarcastically. "Why leave it to chance?"

Tanner shrugged. "Good luck." Then he added seriously: "Don't talk to her, Martin. Don't give her a chance to pull something. Kill her on sight."

"I'll do that," Stan lied. He checked his heat gun, then worked the dial on the hoop once more and stepped through the shining oval....

... onto a street on Chicago's south side, a few doors down from the Hyde Park theatre. He walked into a nearby drug store and made a phone call, then walked back to the corner to wait. A moment later, one of his chief lieutenants, Caldwell, drove up.

"We lost Jones and Hagerty, Mr. Martin--just a few hours ago. I was making up a report on them when you called."

"You got the indicator?"

The man held out a small gadget that looked a little like a light meter. Stan swung it around experimentally. A small light mounted on it flickered briefly. He swung it back again and the light glowed, went out, and then glowed strongly again.

"You know, I don't see how you trace a person with that," Caldwell said, curious. "How does it work?"

There were a lot of things that Caldwell didn't know, Stan thought. He didn't know that the deal was anything more than a smuggling operation, he didn't realize that this was not a gang war but was one for much higher stakes but if his curiosity kept up, some day he would stumble on the truth.

Which would be rather fatal for Mr. Caldwell.

"You're paid for what you do, Caldwell, not for being curious."

"Okay, okay--I just asked."

Stan slid into the back seat. "Let's go."

Caldwell threw the car in gear and they drove silently north through the crowded streets. The light on the small indicator waxed and waned and grew steadily brighter as the faint radiation from the fusion material increased.

"You don't want to get too close," Caldwell said suddenly. "That's what happened to the other boys. They got too close and then they were ambushed."

The indicator light slowly increased in brilliance, then started to die again. They were about three blocks away, Stan thought, passing it at right angles.

"Okay, Caldwell, let me out here."

"You sure you won't need help, Mr. Martin? I could get some of the boys...."

"Wait on the corner. If I'm not back in an hour, then notify Tanner. He'll know what to do."

He got out of the car, palming the indicator in his hand. Avis--or at least the package--was somewhere in the area.

He glanced at the indicator and started walking, stopping occasionally to look in a store window and steal another look at the indicator. A block and a half down. One door, two doors....

And back one.

An office building. The usual miscellany--dentists and doctors and small professional firms.

He walked in, his eyes documenting everybody in the lobby. Any two or three of the men idling in the lobby could be her men, he thought.

And if any one of them had made a false movement, there would have been a sudden massacre.

"Top floor, please."

The elevator crept slowly up and let him out on the fifth floor.

The reaction on the indicator was strong. He went down to the fourth floor where it was stronger, then down to the third.

The second floor and the light dimmed slightly. It was the third floor then.

He walked quietly back up the stairs and paused at the landing, listening. There were no sounds of anyone in the corridor. He walked casually down it. A doctor's office, a dentist's office, a hairdresser's, and an employment agency.

The employment agency, he thought sharply. The perfect front, the perfect cover.

The perfect way to recruit agents.

He stopped quietly outside and unlimbered his heat gun from its shoulder holster. He turned the knob and walked in.

And was suddenly aware that all noise had stopped, the air was heavy, and the dust motes in the stream of sunlight that lanced through the window were perfectly still.

* * * * *

"You took a long time getting here, Martin."

She was standing in front of her desk, looking exactly as when he had seen her on the ramp in Chicago and on the street in the Paris suburb. A tall woman, a little on the thin side. Thick black hair that hung loosely about her face, making a frame for a pale skin and cold, green eyes. It was a hard, capable face with just a suggestion that at another time and another place, it might have been a beautiful face.

Now.... A drawn face, with a tinge of sadness to it.

Stan leveled his heat gun. She didn't move a muscle but patiently waited for him to press the stud.

Don't talk to her, Tanner had said. Kill her on sight. But he hadn't come to kill her. Not yet. Not before he found out some information.

He lowered his arm.

"Don't tell me you've finally gotten sick of killing people," she said quietly.

"No doubt it runs into hundreds," Stan said sarcastically. "I suppose any day now the apes will be getting suspicious."

She shook her head, bitterly. "Not--they won't. It happens all the time. People die in lonely little rooms, people have accidents, people commit suicide. Or so the Terrans think. They never seem to look beyond."

"You forget," Stan pointed out. "We've lost men, too. And I'm sure that not all of them died from natural causes."

"Who have you lost, Martin? Thieves, dope peddlers, murderers, and worse? And what have I lost? Patriots, scientists, statesmen--the few who understand and believe and are willing to work with me."

Stan shrugged impatiently. "You said I had taken a long time in getting here. I suppose you planned it that way."

She looked surprised. "Why else do you think we stole the fusion packages? Just to keep you from replacing them? The Thuscans can supply you with all the packages you need. We wanted to give you something by which you could trace me."

"It's a wonder you weren't killed before this."

A half smile broke the granite lines of her face. "Nobody but you would have gotten this far, Martin."

"So you got me here. What do you want?"

She looked at him thoughtfully for a full minute, weighing him.

"I want you to change sides, Martin. I want you to help us."

He stared at her in disbelief. "You must have known I wouldn't agree--even before you asked me."

"We need your help," she said steadily.

"You're doing all right."

"We're losing," she said, her face looking even more pale. "We've lost close to three hundred agents and we've located only ten fusion packages. I don't know your exact time table but I know it's sometime in November. It's late August now." Her face twisted. "We haven't got a chance, and you know it!"

"That's right," he agreed. "You haven't got a chance. What do you want me to do? Sell out?"

"You've already sold once," she said brutally.

There was that hint again, he thought sharply. The hint that she knew something about himself that he didn't. Or at least, she thought she did.

"Why should I sell out to a group of aliens?" he asked curiously.

"Because we're not a group of aliens," she said calmly. "Because this planet is _our_ planet, everybody on it is an Aurelian. And so are you!"

"You expect me to believe that?"

"It's true!" she blazed. "But you've been conditioned! You believe everything the Thuscans tell you and you've never questioned it. Now it's time somebody told you the truth!"

* * * * *

She leaned closer to him and he caught a trace of faint perfume. "This whole world could go up in smoke, Martin, and it actually wouldn't be important. Not to the Thuscans and not to my own people. You know why? Because it's a sidelight! An unimportant little skirmish in a battle your mind couldn't even conceive of!"

"You're lying," he said, without conviction.

She walked to the window and gestured outside.

"This Earth--it's not the home of the human race, Martin. It's a colony planet--colonized thousands of years ago, like a hundred other systems. For the last fifty thousand years, Aurelia has expanded throughout the galaxy. We don't keep contact with all the planets we've colonized--we can't. Our mission was to sow the human race far and wide and let them develope as they would.

"That was a mistake." She walked back to the desk. "Eventually we ran into the Thuscans--your so-beloved friends, Martin! They were expanding too, towards us. We had to fall back to try and defend our primitive little colony planets. And that wasn't easy. It wasn't easy at all."

Her face clouded and the look of sadness deepened.

"We had been peaceful for too long. And we weren't professional militarists. And we were so few. So pitifully few! The most we could hope to do was to combat the Thuscan system of infiltration, and then try to convince each planet of its own peril, so they could look to their own defenses."

Stan sneered. "You haven't been successful, have you?"

"What do you think would happen if we showed ourselves and set down a ship?" she asked curtly. "Most of the planets would be paralyzed with terror! They'd consider us suspect and they would hate us because we were more advanced. I do what I can. I try to convince a few. And when I do, they usually try to help." She looked at him again and her face was sheer hate. "Patriotic men, Martin--men that you've helped to slaughter!"

For a fraction of a second, she looked like she was going to break down. Then her face hardened again. Her voice was husky.

"I've manned the barricades on a thousand different planets, Martin! I've fought the Thuscans for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I've succeeded, more often I've failed. And when I've failed, I've had to run away." Her voice changed to steel. "But I'm not running anymore. If I lose, I'm staying here."

"You picked the wrong person to give a speech to," Stan said coldly. He started for the door and then stopped. "You said I was an Aurelian, a human being. What did you mean by that?"

"You were born in this city 25 years ago," she said in a low voice. "You worked here, your family lived here. You had a mother and a brother named Larry. You were ... exceptional. All the indications are, that you would have made a great man. You loved the world and the people in it. When you were seventeen, you were kidnapped by the Thuscans and conditioned to what you are now. They intentionally made you lose your memory, so that you would have no memories and no will--no will but theirs."

"I don't believe you," he said heavily.

"You don't want to." She paused. "You better leave, Martin. You better go back to the marionette makers and the string pullers."

He took one last look, realizing that something inside him was struggling to give the girl comfort, to say something that might help her. Then he shrugged and walked out the door.

He was two blocks away before he realized that both he and the girl could have killed each other at almost any time.

But neither of them had made any attempt to.