Chapter VII: Free-for-all

Carroll passed a partly opened door down the corridor, and as he passed, he heard Kingallis utter a single word of dislike at someone unknown. Though it was in the alien tongue Carroll's well-trained mind gave him the translation in terms of real meaning rather than the transliteration of the word in terms of his mother tongue, as is often the case with a language learned after the initial schooling as a child.

Carroll paused instantly, and as he did so, the door opened more, showing both Kingallis and his sister. Kingallis shook his head angrily.

"So you gave him the record," he said flatly.

Rhinegallis was silent. It was obvious to Carroll that there had been accusal and denial previously but that his instant recognition of the alien word had been perfect evidence. Carroll sailed in instantly.

"She's given me nothing," he said sharply. "I just happen to be curious."

Kingallis turned from his sister to face Carroll.

"That is a bald-faced lie," he said.

Carroll's reply was in the alien tongue, a rather harsh alien platitude pertaining to the fact that a guilty man always requires a sucker to account for his own mistakes, whereas an honest man can admit an error.

Kingallis sneered and his eyes became glittery-hard.

"She gave it to you," he said. "This I know." He pointed to the minute temple-electrode--flesh-colored--and the spider-web thin wire that ran to the flat bulge in his coat pocket.

"So?" snapped Carroll. He measured Kingallis deliberately. The alien had a few years to give away, but Carroll had a few pounds to make up the difference. Also Carroll, being slightly older, was more of a competent judge of men.

Though this was not a man-to-man affair Carroll's judgment of the alien might be better than the alien's judgment of him. Furthermore Carroll knew himself to be cool-headed and alert.

"So Rhine has defied our rules," snapped Kingallis.

"And?" inquired Carroll overpolitely.

"Crime--and punishment! She has endangered our very future!"

Carroll smiled. "Seems to me that you have spent a number of years endangering the future of Sol's children," he said cynically. "Perhaps it is time to switch?"

Rhinegallis stood up. "I have as much right as you," she snapped at her brother. "My position is as high as yours. Carroll discovered that he was being tricked. Therefore there was nothing else to do but to regain his confidence."

"Seems to me that Carroll's discovery was entirely due to your inability to cope with him," snapped Kingallis angrily.

Rhinegallis laughed bitterly. "When will you learn," she asked sarcastically, "never to try to play games with your mental superiors?"

Kingallis fumed, "Shut up!" and, turning, back-handed Rhine across the mouth. The girl retreated, her hand to her face, covering the patch that was swiftly growing red. Kingallis followed her across the floor.

Carroll followed Kingallis. He caught the alien by one shoulder and whirled Kingallis, spinning him off balance. As the alien turned, Carroll's fist came across in a short jab that had every pound of weight and every erg of muscle energy behind it. He connected and it sent Kingallis reeling crazily across the room.

Carroll followed, warily. Kingallis recovered and struck out at Carroll, but his mode of fighting was untrained from Terran standards. Carroll opened his right hand and chopped viciously at Kingallis's throat, but caught the alien's arm instead.

* * * * *

The alien yipped from the pain and Carroll followed him close and brought his fist up from under and caught the alien in the pit of the stomach. Kingallis folded over the blow and then unfolded in a series of retching gasps, his arms and legs working to bring him air.

Carroll lifted his foot. He drove it forward, heel-hard, against the alien's temple. The blow crushed the temple electrode into the skull as Kingallis went inert upon the floor.

"Come!" snapped Carroll.

"Come? Where?"

"Out of here!"

"But--?"

"Come along. You don't want to wait for the rest, do you?"

Rhinegallis took a quick look at her brother's inert form.

"Is he...?"

Carroll grunted. "I'm not interested," he said. "Come on--you've got to show me the way out!"

"But I can't do that!"

Carroll advanced upon her. He caught her arm and brought it up behind her. He lifted gently.

"Now," he said, "you're going to show me the way out of here or I'll twist this off, see?"

"But I mustn't," she said.

Carroll smiled sourly.

"Rhine," he said pointedly, "you've lost your home right now. From here on in you are on the outside of your camp. Your best bet is to throw in with me and at least stay alive."

"I'll never help you."

"Fair enough," he said. "For I didn't help you. But this will let you know that Terrans have an attitude known as 'gratitude' which to your alien concept is both foolhardy and decadent. But no Terran, no matter how much he hated his enemy, would abandon to them one of their own that gave him help. We protect our friends, Rhine."

"Then we must hurry," she breathed. "But where can we go?"

"Where?" he echoed cheerfully. "We've got the whole world before us!"

"But you must hide as well," she said simply. "Because my friends will be seeking you in earnest, now."

Carroll nodded as he caught the implication. "I shall return to my friends," he stated flatly, "when I have evidence enough to prove myself. Then your people can go ahead and kill me if they can--but my world will be protected. Until I can convince them, I am the slender reed upon which depends the future of Sol. And," he added bitterly, "against what?"

"That I will never tell you," she said. "But we must hurry!"

It was five days later that Carroll's roadster--stolen from the alien's garage--arrived before a summer home in Wisconsin. Twenty miles from the nearest town of consequence it was set in a woodsy area near one of many small lakes.

"Here," he said happily, "we can hide--and we can live--and we can work!"

* * * * *

Pollard slowly shook hands.

"Carroll again?" asked Majors.

The psychologist nodded wearily. "For some time he has been working quietly, though with deep preoccupation, which I suppose is normal. Whether he has been pondering over the absence of that black limousine and its mythically inimical occupants, I cannot say."

"But what happened this time?"

"He has disappeared!"

Majors blinked. "Just like that?"

Dr. Pollard smiled and nodded. "Just like that!"

Majors thought for a moment. "We can locate him," he said uncertainly.

"No," Pollard said finally. "That will not do. The chances are very high that Carroll may have gone to his summer home."

"Well, let's find out."

"Let him alone. You underestimate the cleverness of the paranoid. He will detect any surveillance. It is my contention that Carroll may have had a glimmer of lucidity--that he may have been partially convinced of his error.

"Majors, there is only one way to cure a paranoid and that is to let him cure himself. Once his own evidence shows the truth, then he will believe. But until that time, all evidence either supports his theory or it is a canard produced by those who want to show him wrong."

"So?"

"So let him be. He can do little harm. In the case of the normal paranoid harboring a persecution complex, it is something tangible against him--wife, neighbor or friend. In that case it is best to do something quickly to protect the innocent. But in Carroll's case it is an intangible--remember the case, Majors?"

"Of course."

"Well, it hasn't changed a bit. Carroll undoubtedly discovered something that his mind refuses to recognize. Therefore this hallucination of the inimical race that is barring Terra from progress.

"What Terra needs more than the man himself is to know what Carroll discovered. I don't know what he's doing nor where he's doing it, but we'll find out--and we'll let him alone."

"Sort of futile, isn't it?" asked Majors.

"It's soul-scarringly futile," said Pollard hopelessly. "He will resent any outside help that does not eagerly agree with him--and then suspect it of chiding tolerance. He can come back only of his own machination. But to probe further at him will drive him only deeper within himself."

Majors nodded. "We'll get young Sally back on the delivery job. At least until James Forrest Carroll reappears again."

Dr. Pollard nodded absently. "And may whatever he is doing bring him to reason!"

James Forrest Carroll sat on a tall stool in front of a workbench in the cellar of the summer home. Before him was a maze of equipment, a pile of written notes and some haywire circuits. He was smoking furiously to the amusement of the girl who sat reading in the single easy chair in the cellar. Finally she put down her book and looked up at him.

"Why did you accuse me of laying eggs?" she asked.

Carroll turned with a smile. "A shot in the dark," he said.

"It's not true," she said. "I'm no--"

Carroll shrugged. "Anthropomorphists have spent a lot of time showing that the humanoid form is best adapted to house intelligence," he said. "The upright carriage, the evolution of the forelegs into facile hands, the placement of the sensory-system in close locale to aid one another.

"The opposing thumb and the ability to lift either a sheet of cigarette paper from the floor or a small anvil from its rest. More and deeper-involved reasons can flow than you can think about."

"Which may all be true," she said pointedly, taking a cigarette from the package and lighting it deftly. She stood up then and rotated swiftly so that her skirt swung out.

"It may all be true," he said. "But not necessarily a matter of exclusive truth. There may be a batch of intelligent octopi and I'll bet that they have ah--er--octopomorphists--sitting around telling the little octopi that their shape is best adapted to house intelligence."

"All of which answers no question," she told him with a smile.

"So you have a humanoid shape to a remarkable degree. This shape is enhanced by the Terran clothing and the Terran cosmetics and, I might add, the Terran surroundings."

"Do go on," she said with grim rumor.

"Your metabolism is not too different," he observed. "At least your digestive system is about as unselective as the Terran. That is normal for any reigning race of a system. Undoubtedly you do have a close approximation of the molecular structure, since I know that your planet is very much like Terra.

"Unfortunately I am not as deeply versed in organic chemistry as I might be or I'd be able to make a few tests. But, Rhine, the idea that two races in the galaxy being so similar in every way that they are cross-fertile is preposterous!"

"Eternity," said Rhinegallis with a murmur, "is that length of time necessary to permit everything to happen at least once."

Carroll grinned. "And that will be the last probability--and furthermore eternity will be sitting on its fundament for ten thousand galactic years after everything else has happened waiting for that little item to show up so it--eternity--can fold up and go home!"

* * * * *

He turned away from her and addressed himself to the equipment again. He worked at it for an hour and then turned to her with a cryptic smile.

"You're a rather dangerous responsibility," he said.

"I know but it was your idea."

"What bothers me," he said thoughtfully, "is whether you will hinder in the end. You will not help now. But will you give me trouble later on?"

"I don't understand."

Carroll thought for a moment before answering. And when he did, it was on another subject.

"I need more information," he said.

"But why might I hinder?"

Carroll smiled widely. "If you don't know," he said, "I'll not be the one to suggest it. But I need information."

"Don't ask me to get it for you."

"I won't. I have little need. I can get it myself!" he said with a deliberate show of independence.

Rhinegallis looked at him steadily. She nodded. "I'm going too," she said.

"No--and why if you deny me help?"

"Because you aided me."

He shook his head. "That was because you were in trouble for having aided me."

"I aided you in the first place because you deserved it," she said softly. "And it does not negate my debt."

"But what do you hope to accomplish? Do you hope to trap me?"

"No."

"Rhine," he said, standing up and stretching, "you do not really understand Terrans. Remember this--I took you out of that concentration camp because I needed your aid in getting free--the guards, the garage attendant, to say nothing of the way home.

"I took you along because you were in danger--because of helping me, regardless of your reasons. Therefore I shall see that you are protected--now, against your own race--later against mine."

"Later?"

"After I unravel this mad pattern."

"You always insist upon some mad pattern," she smiled. "Really, it is very simple."

He looked at her angrily. "Just ignore it and maybe it will leave, huh? Bosh!"

"You can do very little against a phantom," she said.

"And therein lie my feelings," he said harshly. "This is more than honor, more than life itself. I'd have little compunction against killing you if it meant that the truth were to be known."

Rhinegallis shrugged. Her life was forfeit anyway after the run-in with her brother.

"But you said something about wanting more information?"

He nodded. "I'm no doctor," he said. "And my knowledge of the finer points of biochemistry is sadly lacking."

"You--"

"I intend to find some way of telling you aliens from humans," he said quickly. "There must be some way."

She smiled tolerantly though there was a question in her eyes.

"I intend to see that you have a most thorough medical examination," he told her. "There must be visible differences which can be told once they are known. Differences which"--and he nodded at her very human figure with its soft curves--"cannot be simulated by artificial means."

She chuckled. "Even though many of the means of wearing a desirable figure have been invented and used by human beings for many years? Don't blame me for that, Carroll. My figure is mine own."

"Then," he said in a hard tone, "let me see!"

"Call me what you will but I have a normal modesty."

He frowned scornfully. "Have you forgotten that we are of entirely different evolutions?"

Rhinegallis smiled coyly. "You forget," she said, "that to all intents and purposes I am a human being. You nor anyone else will ever get me to say or prove that I am not. That includes acting like one too."

"Let it pass," he said. "My judgment might be faulty. There are excellent doctors, however. If you claim that you intend to act as human as you can you'll have no objection to visiting a doctor."

"Not when necessary," she replied calmly. "But remember, I told you that I would give you no information that would tend to harm."

"And I've told you that when I have evidence that tends to show my correctness I shall not ask for help--I shall take it!"