S. M. Tenneshaw

“ Only then, incredibly, off beyond Kruze, by the warp-room's entrance, movement flickered.
The breath caught in my throat. I forced myself to hold my eyes full front on Kruze.
Over by the hatchway, the movement resolved itself into a death-pale, shadow-silent figure ... the figure of a woman, creeping out from behind the solid banks of micromesh transistors.
Celeste.
Only that was impossible.
I began to shake.
Kruze laughed. "It's not so easy, is it Traynor? Not when you know the other man will shoot!" ”

“ Celeste's face came up, the grey eyes feverish. "The rest aren't fighting like you are. They haven't gone against Controller Kruze's orders. They haven't violated warping regulations. They haven't thrown a planet into chaos with a deportation edict!"
I rocked back. "Celeste—! What is this?"
"Don't you see, Mark? Everything you've done is different from the others! All the rest—they fight out of discipline, or fear, or maybe even desperation. But you—there's hate in the way you go about it. You don't rest, you don't slow down, you don't stop to think of consequences. ”

“ Kruze said, "I know. You're trying to nerve yourself to rush me. Only believe me, it wouldn't do any good. I can ship you to Sheol dead just as well as living."
He turned from the board as he spoke, so that he faced me squarely. Never had the gun been steadier; never the challenge of the cold eyes more apparent, more relentless.
"Rack you, Kruze!" I choked. I wouldn't keep my voice from shaking.
"Would you like to check my logic, Traynor?" My tormentor was openly taunting now, his whole heavy body aquiver with enjoyment. "As I see it, once you and the girl are dead, I've nothing to fear. ”

“ Involuntarily, my hands moved in frantic, pleading gestures. "They can simulate men. It's only the conditioned consistency of human behavior that's baffled them—"
Kruze's great head moved. "Guards, I'm tired of listening to this nonsense."
"Yes, Controller."—This from the thin man. As one, he and his companion closed in.
"Kruze, for the sake of all of us, the whole human race! What does it matter what the Kel look like? We've seen their globeships. We know what happened at Bejak II, at Corrigar, at Astole—"
Hands seized my arms; wrestled me backward.
"Please, Kruze! You've got to listen!" ”

“ Celeste said, "But he's gone, Mark. Beyond your reach."
I stopped short. "What—?"
"He warped back as soon as he left the globeship, here. All the way back, clear to the Interplanetary Center."
It rocked me, for an instant. Then I shrugged. "Fair enough."
"You mean—?"
"I warped out to Rizal without a clearance. I can leave the same way."
"No Mark! You mustn't! He could kill you!"
"I'll have a paragun by the time I get there."
"Then I'll go too, Mark! Take me with you!"
"No."
"But why, Mark? Why? Don't you understand how I feel? No matter what happens, I want to be with you." ”

“ Before I could recover, Kruze whipped a gun of his own from the desk's sorter-slot. His voice rang with harsh triumph: "As you said earlier, Friend Traynor—don't move, if you want to live!"
The light in his eyes said even more. I stood ever so still.
Heaving up from his chair, he came around the desk, pocketing my own paragun in the process. "You're an ingenious man, Traynor. So I know you'll appreciate ingenuity in another. You see, a buzzer can be under a desk just as well as on top of it. ”

“ Tell me! What's happened to you that makes you hate them?"
"Nothing, rack you! Nothing at all!" The words came out in a rush, almost before I knew that I was speaking. "I'm just like any other agent, except that Psychogenetics picked me to be de-conditioned."
"You were—de-conditioned?—I mean, before you came in contact with the thrill-mills?"
"Yes, of course. Psychogenetics thought a free mind might work better in a fight like this than one pinned down to pattern." ”

“ Kruze frowned thoughtfully. "I hate to chance it, though. Those mills shatter conditioning badly. And once that's happened, someone's likely to jump to the wrong conclusions, the way you've done."
Wearily, I shook my head. "Save your breath, Controller. The only deal I'll make is not to kill you, providing you stop those executions. Beyond that, you'll have to take your chances with the courts." ”

“ Gaylord stared. "What is this, anyhow? What are you talking about?" The furrows were back in his forehead.
"It's time to cut loose, that's all. We need action—real action, not just back-tracking." In spite of myself, anticipating, I smiled a little, "You've got a sigman on duty here somewhere, of course?"
"A sigman—?" Gaylord's furrows deepened. "Why, sure, of course."
"All right, then." I hooked my thumbs in my tunic-sash. "I want a message plated—an all-points, top-emergency, triple-restricted action order."
Utter incredulity came to the unit controller's eyes. He didn't move. ”

“ You hated going back, being reconditioned. Every time, it got harder for you to give up freedom. Only you didn't dare admit it, not even to yourself."
"So I took it out on the Kel, you mean?" It was an effort to keep my own voice steady. "You may be right."
"Then—"
"No. Because this is something else again." I gestured to the boxes that held the thrill-mills. "Do you know where these came from?"
"I can guess."
"Then you know why I've got to follow through on them."
"But—"
"Say that it's for the cause of human freedom. The freedom of all those poor lost souls Kruze has ordered executed. ”

“ So I'll simply see that she's hunted down, supplied with a thrill-mill, and then executed on the spot for possession of it. I suspect it can all be taken care of before she even realizes that anything out of line has happened to you."
I looked up, then. Slowly. Painfully. Still not quite believing.
"That hit you, did it?" Kruze laughed—a harsh, mirthless sound, deep in his throat. "I thought it would. That's what happens, when a man's emotions run unconditioned, unrestrained." ”

“ I was on Bejak II! I saw the things they did—the way the people were slaughtered.
"Only I saw other things too, Mark Traynor! I saw it wasn't the Kel's fault, not all of it. We could have fought them off, if it hadn't been for the FedGov and its racked compulsory conditioning.
"That conditioning—it made us like so many sheep. It robbed us of our imagination, our lust for life, our fighting spirit. ”

“ That door didn't open by itself. But if you go on in spite of it, then I go with you."
I stared at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, I nodded. "All right. Let's go."
"Mark—"
I said, "There's no other way, Celeste. I'm human; this is my race the Kel are out to kill. To me, that means I fight them. I fight them all the way, till I drop, no matter what."
Her eyes were wide as she stared at me. "But what will you do?" She gestured helplessly. "What can you?"
I shook my head. "I'm not sure. But Kruze is here on Rizal. I'll see him, talk to him. He's got power. He can order action." ”

“ He can't even hate his wife in the first place. That's one of the reasons compulsory conditioning came in.
"But back before that, he did something: He struck out; he over-reacted; he kicked the dog instead of his wife."
I didn't say anything. I was shaking too hard.
Celeste said softly, "Could that be you in that picture, Mark? Could you be hating one thing and striking another?"
Spasmodically, I drew up my knees and hugged my arms round them—burying my face, squeezing my eyes tight shut in a vain, desperate effort to blot out the room, and Celeste, and the things she said. ”

“ Controller Gaylord's brow smoothed as if by magic. A caustic note suddenly edged his voice. "Maybe you better check those file-reels after all, Traynor. They show 112 clerks in that group that got the thrill-mills. There also were 98 women engaged in motherhood, 226 tech grades, and 44 drudge grades."
"And that wouldn't strike you as protective camouflage, maybe?"
"Protective nonsense, you mean! All you're offering is a hair-brained theory, with neither facts nor logic to back it!"
He was as bad as Kruze. ”

“ Gaylord's face seemed to sag. Breathing fast and shallow, he let go of me and began chewing at his lower lip.
Still pointedly casual, I smoothed my tunic. "Take a good look at yourself, Controller," I suggested. "How would you diagnose a man whose temper flares, in a world where temper can't exist? How would you judge someone who jumps and jerks and jitters under pressure?"
No response.
I leaned forward. "You know the answer, of course, as well as I do. When the thrill-mills began to come in, you thought you'd experiment with one a little—try it out, see how it worked. ”

“ Now Kruze stepped to the warp-board, adjusting controls with swift, sure skill. "This should interest you, Traynor." He talked as he worked, a cool, conversational monolog. "As you know, a space-warp calls for both transmitting and receiving units. For round-trip travel, you have to have both at each terminal point.
"That fact gave me an idea—one designed to take care of crises just such as this one you've precipitated.
"First, I looked for precisely the right planet: one not only uninhabited, but completely devoid of any means of sustaining life. ”

“ Beside him, his thinner companion threw me a look of smoldering hate. A sullen-looking Gaylord was dusting himself off behind them.
I said desperately, "Kruze, you've got to listen! I found that girl—the one who called about the thrill-mills on the voco. She's been a Kel prisoner ever since Bejak II. She knows their plan, the details—"
"And just how does she know it?"
"What—?"
"I said, how does she know it?" Never had the controller's heavy-lidded eyes seemed colder, the bulky body less yielding. And then, as I groped: "To the best of my knowledge, no human has ever communicated with the Kel. ”

“ Even if you win one fight, you've got to turn around and hunt another. Because the thing you fight isn't the thing you're really trying to destroy."
I said harshly, "I don't know what you're trying to say. I don't think you do, either. But whether you do or don't, I don't care. So far as I'm concerned, you're just another traitor to your race. You're like that Kel who helped us kill the rest of them so he could live. You did the same thing when the globes took over Bejak II. You let them bring you here, helped them put out these thrill-mills—"
I broke off as Celeste began to shake. ”

“ Beside me, the thin guard choked; snatched for the paragun he carried in a hip holster.
He died before he could even get it clear.
The other guard, the heavy-set one, backed up against Controller Kruze's door, hands already raised. His breath rasped in his throat. His face was dough-grey.
For my part, I couldn't even speak.
And now, within the shaft-lift's cage, more movement ... another figure darting forward. A woman's figure.
I choked "Celeste—!"
"Oh, Mark, Mark...." She ran to me; flung her arms about me. "I was so afraid!" ”

“ We passed through the hatch. A seamless sheen of metal cut off the last sight of my comrades.
Coolly, I gazed about at a room even more weird in conception than the dungeon sphere.
Again, the arc seemed to be the basic motif. But in this place it was a chopped-up, intersected arc, as if function here had held sway over symmetry.
Everywhere, too, there were shifting shapes, strange bodies—bodies long and bodies short, bodies thick and bodies thin. Some resembled life-forms that I knew. Others bore no resemblance to anything I'd ever seen before. ”

“ The world was too bright, too vivid; reality was just too wonderful to give up.
"So, instead of turning yourself in for reconditioning, you've tried to hide the truth and pretend to be just as dull and unresponsive as you were before...."
Gaylord's face had grown paler and paler as I talked. Now suddenly, he spun in his seat and tried to throw himself out the grav-car's open door.
I caught his shoulder; slammed him back. "Controller, I've got news for you! Run out on me now, and I'll see that Kruze has you blocked back to Drudge Third." ”

“ Celeste's lovely features seemed to stiffen. I couldn't be sure, though, because the scanner-plate went blank in the same instant.
Like an echo, someone began pounding on the door.
Cutting off the voco, I went over and unlocked the heavy portal.
A messenger was waiting with a thrill-mill for me.
I frowned. "How did you get in here? Does Rizal Security let strangers wander through its headquarters in the middle of the night?"
"I dunno." The messenger shrugged stupidly. "That man in Communications—he said it was all right."
"Man? What man?"
"This man, Traynor." ”

“ Kruze, you don't understand! This whole thrill-mill business—it's a Kel scheme to break through, here on Rizal! But you'll never crack it, trying to back track. You've got to make whoever's in it come to you. That's why I did the things I did. That action order, all the rest—it was just so I could make a contact, be a decoy! ”

“ I choked on my own pent-up emotions. "Controller—if I just hadn't forced Gaylord to put out that action order—"
"I know. But it's not your fault; not really. I shouldn't have let those fools in Psychogen interfere with your conditioning." Kruze's heavy jowls quivered. "Besides, what does it matter now? We're all of us as good as dead." ”

“ In spite of myself, I breathed in sharply. "And you—?"
"I survived Bejak II. The price was to help them."
"The thrill-mills—"
"They're part of a plan. Man's conditioned consistency was a bit difficult for the Kel to handle. They felt the simplest solution was to upset the conditioning." A pause. "Thanks to you, they'll probably succeed."
"Thanks to me—!"
"Yes. You see"—a smile, without mirth—"the Kel are shape-shifters. They can take any form. Tonight, an infiltration party will move into Rizal's defenses and take over the posts of the men you had seized. ”