Beyond The Barrier Part 9

He turned. And Churan was standing in the doorway, with a black, lensed machine on a tripod beside him.

With shock tingling through his nervous system, Naismith took a step forward; the machine swiveled slightly on its mounting to follow him. He stopped.

"Don't do it, Naismith," Churan said tensely. "This is a force gun, locked onto you as its target. If I press the re- lease-" he showed Naismith a tiny control box in his hand- "or if you move too suddenly, the gun will fire."

Naismith forced himself to relax. "Why the armament?" he asked contemptuously.

"We have decided it is safer. If you have no plan to attack us, it will make no difference to you. Now follow, please, and make no sudden moves for your own safety."

He backed away, and the machine rolled back beside him, its glittering lenses swiveling to stare at Naismith, almost with an air of intelligence: as if the machine were alive, watching him....

I should have looked for the a.r.s.enal, Naismith thought, with a sick feeling of defeat. But perhaps it would not have made any difference-they would have found me there before I could take anything ...

Churan backed out into the middle of the corridor and stopped. The headband with its metal box lay on the carpet.

"Pick it up," he ordered curtly.

Naismith moved forward as slowly as he dared. "Where are Lall and the child?" he asked, temporizing.

"Safe," Churan spat. "Pick up the headband!"

Naismith stooped, got the thing in his fingers. Tell me,Churan," he said, "why all this caution? Why can't you just go forward in time and see if everything turns out all right?"

Churan's amber eyes gleamed. "We did that, Mr. Naismith.

The results-were ambiguous. We decided to take no chances with you. Put on the headband."

Naismith raised the headband, weighing it in his hands. He swayed slightly, watching the feral head of the machine turn, almost imperceptibly, on its oiled socket. What was the principle involved? Heat? If he could somehow manage to reduce his body temperature- Churan glared. "Put it on!"

Naismith's body tensed. For reasons he could not clearly understand, the thing he held was intensely abhorrent. It might be better to jump, take his chances- "I warn you!" said Churan, holding the control box in squat fingers.

Naismith's lips pulled back in a grimace. He raised the headband, slowly fitted it over his skull.

The last thing he saw, before darkness crashed around him, was Churan's triumphant smile.

Chapter Nine.

His head ached. He was sitting on the floor, holding his head in his hands to quiet the throbbing pain. He looked around, moving with exaggerated caution, for the slightest motion made his head feel as if it were about to split.

The headband lay across the room, bent out of shape. Churan was staring at him, breathing hard; sweat was beaded on his narrow forehead.

"How do you feel?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely.

Naismith tried to sit up, groaned and slumped back. "Pain in my head," he answered indistinctly. "What happened?"

"You tore off the helmet halfway through," Churan mut- tered. "It's lucky for you that I had neutralized the gun. Make no mistake-it's locked on again now!" He twitched, and resumed, "I don't understand how- You are not supposed to be able to resume voluntary control until after the memory unit has stopped working. ... Do you understand everything I say?"

"Why shouldn't I?" Naismith asked, and then halted, trans- fixed by a realization that almost drove his pain into the background.

He and Churan were not speaking English. They were talking in the language of his dreams-the same hissing, guttural tongue the aliens used-but now every word was clear."Who is the Highborn?" Churan demanded, inching nearer.

"The hereditary aristarch," Naismith answered impatiently.

"She-" Once more he stopped, in total dismay. The knowledge that he found in his mind, a complete and detailed history of the Highborn and her court, had not been there before.

"The process was successful, then," Churan said with evident relief. "You missed the end of the disk, of course, but we can supply that later, if necessary. I was afraid that- Sit still until you feel better." He turned, retreated.

He was back in a moment, followed by Lall. Both aliens were staring at him with an air of suppressed excitement.

Churan, muttering something under his breath, stepped over to the wall and picked up the damaged headband, showing it to Lall.

Her muddy complexion paled. She held out her hand for the headband, fingered the bent metal unbelievingly. "He did that?

While the educator was turned on?"

Both aliens stared at Naismith. "Does he have the com- pulsion?"

"Obviously not."

Lall snarled at him, "How do you know?"

The pain in Naismith's head had eased a little. He got gingerly to his feet and retreated with cautious movements to the wall. He leaned back, watching and listening, while the aliens erupted into a sudden furious argument.

"How, then?" Churan demanded, thrusting his face into Lall's. "Tell me how."

"Try it yourself!" she returned, and thrust the headband into his hand.

Churan looked at it with surprise; his amber eyes narrowed, then glinted with understanding.

"The disk will begin at the moment it was interrupted,"

Lall said. "Go ahead, put it on-what harm can it do you?"

Churan grinned mirthlessly. "True. Very well." He pried dubiously at the bent framework. "I do not know if it will function-" He shrugged and put the headband on. His eyes closed, then opened again.

"Well?" the woman demanded.

Churan took the headband off slowly. "You were right. The compulsion formula was almost all there-he could have heard only the first syllable of it."

Again the two aliens stared at him, with something like respect in their faces."This changes matters," Churan muttered. He glanced side- long at Naismith, and added, "Don't forget, he understands what we say now. Come-" He took Lall's arm, drew her aside.

Naismith straightened up. "Just a moment!" he said. "Are you going to go on trying to keep me in the dark? Because if so, I give you warning now that my cooperation is over. He gestured at the gun on its tripod. "Turn that thing off, and tell me what that machine was meant to make me do."

The aliens looked at him sullenly. "There was a compulsion formula in it," Lall said at last, "to make sure you would do as we wish, when you are past the Barrier."

Naismith said, "Then the story you told me about myself was false?"

"No, it was true, every word," said Churan earnestly, coming forward a step. "We only wanted to make sure-"

"Wait," Lall interrupted. She peered into Naismith's face.

"Mr. Naismith-do you hate the Lenlu Din?"

Naismith opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again. At her words, memories had begun to swim up out of some black place in his mind.

"The Lenlu Din . . ." he said. Plump, floating people in puffed costumes of scarlet and gold, peach, frost-white, orchid, buff. Shrill overbearing voices, glittering eyes. . . .

"This may be the answer," the woman was saying in a tense undertone to Churan. "Forget the compulsion-if he really hates them, he will do it because he wants to. Let us try him on the lie detector. What can we lose now?"

Churan looked uncertainly at Naismith, and there was a flicker of anger in his eyes. "How can I tell?" he muttered. "He is a Shefth."

"All the more reason. We will do it. Come." She beckoned to Naismith, started off down the corridor.

"The gun," said Naismith, not moving.

"No," she said. "We are going to be frank with you, Mr.

Naismith-but the gun stays, a little longer."

Naismith shrugged and followed. The gun retreated as he moved, rolling smoothly along beside the two aliens, with its lensed muzzle trained steadily on him.

It was that way all the way back to the aliens' suite. The pain in Naismith's head was receding, only a dull ache now, but his mind was confused by an insistent crowd of images, sounds, voices babbling together, faces that were unknown and yet familiar...

Yet he was dimly aware that there was something unex- plained about what had just happened. Why had Churanfound him just there, in the corridor outside the gymna- sium? ...

They entered the lounge, where Yegga sprang up from the floor, spilling a bowl of something greenish-yellow, and went to its mother with an angry squall.

She cuffed it aside impatiently. "Sit down, Mr. Naismith.

Gunda, get the detector."

"It will take a few-" Churan began. "No, I am wrong, I have to retrieve the time vehicle anyway. I may as well do it, and then-"

"Go, get it," she said impatiently. Churan went out, with a last sullen glance at Naismith.

Naismith lowered himself into a chair, thinking hard. Lall sat down opposite him, her long amber eyes hooded and watchful. "What were you doing in the ship, all that time until Gunda found you?" she demanded.

Naismith stared back at her somberly. Twice now, he was thinking, someone had tried to tamper with his mind-first Wells, now Churan-and twice, while he was unconscious, something in him had exploded with incredible violence . . .

some thing buried in his mind. Naismith felt the birth of an angry impatience. This must not go on; sooner or later he must find a way to reach those buried depths, force them to give up their knowledge....

"I was in the library," he answered.

Lall's fingers curled tensely on the table. "And what did you find there?"

She was so evidently nervous, anxious about his reply ...

Naismith considered her narrowly, and said, "I found out that the time vehicle is not a part of this era's technology."

Her body visibly relaxed. She laughed. "I could have told you that much, Mr. Naismith. No, if you are going to build your own time vehicle, you cannot do it here. For that we must take you many centuries forward."

"How far?"

She shook her head. "When the time comes, Mr. Naismith."

Churan came in, carrying the machine under one arm and an oblong gray case in the other. He set the gray case down on the table, with a curt "Here," and crossed the room to deposit the other machine in the wall cabinet.

Lall was removing the cover from the oblong box, revealing a smooth gray-metal base with two protrusions-one a dull pinkish-gray ovoid, the other a more complex shape, some- what like a misshapen mushroom."This is an ordinary lie detector, Mr. Naismith," Lall said, pushing it toward him. She moved her chair quickly, stood up and stepped back. Churan was at the farther wall, watching intently. The gun on its tripod pointed steadily at him.

"Try it," said Lall. "Pick up a dish in one hand, take the grip of the machine in the other. . . . Now say, 'I am not holding the dish.'"

Naismith followed directions. Nothing happened.

"Now say, 'I am holding the dish.'"

Naismith repeated it after her. The oval bulb flared into pink, hot brightness.

"Now, this is all you have to do," Lall said breathlessly.

"Put your hand on that grip and say to me, 'I hate the Lenlu Din.'"

Churan moved his hand slightly: in it was the control box of the automatic gun.

Naismith stiffened, aware that he had let the crisis find him unready. If he refused, he would be shot. If he took the test, and failed- Once more the images of those bright, bloated people drifted up to the surface of his mind. He examined his own feelings dispa.s.sionately. He neither hated nor loved them. To part of his mind they were utterly strange; to another part, they were familiar and almost commonplace....

"Now, Mr. Naismith," said Lall sharply.

Naismith put his hand on the rounded mushroom-top of the grip. It was a shape that smoothly fitted his palm. He tensed his muscles, without hope-he knew he could not move fast enough to escape the gun. Because he could think of nothing else to do, he said, "I hate the Lenlu Din."

The oval bulb burned fiercely for a long moment, then slowly faded, glimmered, went out. Naismith heard Lall's and Churan's intake of breath, saw them relax and begin to move toward the table.

He stared blankly at the detector, thinking, But that's im- possible!

The staggering thing was that the aliens themselves showed no suspicion. As far as they were concerned, the detector test was obviously conclusive. Lall said briskly, "One more day here will be enough. You will put on the educator headband once more-without tricks, this time, Mr. Naismith. Then it will take you some twelve hours to absorb all you have learned ... the process is sometimes fatiguing, and it is important that you rest during that period. After that," she finished, "you will be ready to begin building your time vehicle."

Naismith looked at her sharply, but there was no humor inher expression. "Do you mean that literally?" he demanded.

"I thought-"

"How else can we get you into the City?" she countered.

"You may be positive they will check whatever story you tell.