The Sentinel Part 6

Stormgren was not to be shaken off so easily.

"There have been many legends suggesting that Earth has been visited in the past by other races."

"I know: I've read the Historical Research Section's report. It makes Earth look like the crossroads of the Universe."

"There may have been visits about which you know nothing," said Stormgren, still angling hopefully. "Though since you must have been observing us for thousands of years, I suppose that's rather unlikely."

"I suppose it is," said Karellen in his most unhelpful manner. And at that moment Stormgren made up his mind.

"Karellen," he said abruptly, "I'll draft out the statement and send it up to you for approval. But I reserve the right to continue pestering you, and if I see any opportunity, I'll do my best to learn your secret."

"I'm perfectly well aware of that," replied the Supervisor, with a slight chuckle.

"And you don't mind?"

"Not in the slightest-though I draw the line at atomic bombs, poison gas, or anything else that might strain our friendship."

Stormgren wondered what, if anything, Karellen had guessed. Behind the Supervisor's banter he had recognized the note of understanding, perhaps-who could tell?-even of encouragement.

"I'm glad to know it," Stormgren replied in as level a voice as he could manage. He rose to his feet, bringing down the cover of his case as he did so. His thumb slid along the catch.

"I'll draft that statement at once," he repeated, "and send it up on the teletype later today."

While he was speaking, he pressed the b.u.t.ton-and knew that all his fears had been groundless. Karellen's senses were no finer than Man's. The Supervisor could have detected nothing, for there was no change in his voice as he said goodbye and spoke the familiar code words that opened the door of the chamber.

Yet Stormgren still felt like a shoplifter leaving a department store under the eyes of the house detective, and breathed a sigh of relief when the airlock doors had finally closed behind him.

V.

"I admit," said van Ryberg, "that some of my theories haven't been very bright. But tell me what you think of this one."

"Must I?"

Pieter didn't seem to notice.

"It isn't really my idea," he said modestly. "I got it from a story of Chesterton's. Suppose that the Overlords are hiding the fact that they've got nothing to hide?"

"That sounds a little complicated to me," said Stormgren, beginning to take slight interest.

"What I mean is this," van Ryberg continued eagerly. "I think that physically they're human beings like us. They realize that we'll tolerate being ruled by creatures we imagine to be-well, alien and super-intelligent. But the human race being what it is, it just won't be bossed around by creatures of the same species." think that physically they're human beings like us. They realize that we'll tolerate being ruled by creatures we imagine to be-well, alien and super-intelligent. But the human race being what it is, it just won't be bossed around by creatures of the same species."

"Very ingenious, like all your theories," said Stormgren. "I wish you'd give them Opus numbers so that I could keep up with them. The objections to this one-"

But at that moment Alexander Wainwright was ushered in.

Stormgren wondered what he was thinking. He wondered, too, if Wainwright had made any contact with the men who had kidnapped him. He doubted it, for he believed Wainwright's disapproval of violent methods to be perfectly genuine. The extremists in his movement had discredited themselves thoroughly, and it would be a long time before the world heard of them again.

The head of the Freedom League listened in silence while the draft was read to him. Stormgren hoped that he appreciated this gesture, which had been Karellen's idea. Not for another twelve hours would the rest of the world know of the promise that had been made to its grandchildren.

"Fifty years," said Wainwright thoughtfully. "That is a long time to wait."

"Not for Karellen, nor for humanity," Stormgren answered. Only now was he beginning to realize the neatness of the Overlords' solution. It had given them the breathing s.p.a.ce they believed they needed, and it had cut the ground from beneath the Freedom League's feet. He did not imagine that the League would capitulate, but its position would be seriously weakened.

Certainly Wainwright realized this as well, as he must also have realized that Karellen would be watching him. For he said very little and left as quickly as he could: Stormgren knew that he would not see him again in his term of office. The Freedom League might still be a nuisance, but that was a problem for his successor.

There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done about good men who were deluded.

"Here's your case," said Duval. "It's as good as new."

"Thanks," Stormgren answered, inspecting it carefully nonetheless. "Now perhaps you can tell me what it was all about-and what we are going to do next."

The physicist seemed more interested in his own thoughts.

"What I can't understand," he said, "is the ease with which we've got away with it. Now if I'd I'd been Kar-" been Kar-"

"But you're not. Get to the point, man. What did did we discover?" we discover?"

"Ah me, these excitable, highly strung Nordic races!" sighed Duval. "Well, it's rather a long story, but the first piece of equipment you carried was a tiny echo sounder using supersonic waves. We went right up the audio spectrum, so high that I was sure no possible sense organs could detect us. When you pressed the b.u.t.ton, a rather complicated set of sound pulses went out in various directions. I won't bother about the details, but the main idea was to measure the thickness of the screen and to find the dimensions of the room, if any, behind it.

"The screen seems to be about five inches thick, and the s.p.a.ce behind it is at least ten yards across. We couldn't detect any echo from the further wall, but we hardly expected to. However, we did did get this." get this."

He pushed forward a photographic record which to Stormgren looked rather like the autograph of a mild earthquake.

"See that little kink?"

"Yes: what is it?"

"Only Karellen."

"Good Lord! Are you sure?"

"It's a pretty safe guess. He's sitting, or standing, or whatever he does, about two yards on the other side of the screen. If the resolution had been better, we might even have calculated his size."

Stormgren's feelings were very mixed as he stared at the scarcely visible deflection of the trace. Until now, there had been no proof that Karellen even had a material body. The evidence was still indirect, but he accepted it with little question.

Duval's voice cut into his reverie.

"The piece of equipment you carried on your second visit was similar," he said, "but used light instead of sound. We had to measure the transmission characteristics of the screen, and that presented considerable difficulties. Obviously we dared not use visible light, so once again we chose frequencies so high that we couldn't imagine any eye focusing them-or any atmosphere transmitting them very far. And again we managed to carry it off.

"You'll realize," he continued, "that there's no such thing as a truly one-way gla.s.s. Karellen's screen, we found when we a.n.a.lyzed our results, transmits about a hundred times as easily in one direction as the other. We've no particular reason to a.s.sume that the figure is very different in the visible spectrum-but we're giving you an enormous safety margin."

With the air of a conjuror producing a whole litter of rabbits, Duval reached into his desk and pulled out a pistol-like object with a flexible bell mouth. It reminded Stormgren of a rubber blunderbuss, and he couldn't imagine what it was supposed to be.

Duval grinned at his perplexity.

"It isn't as dangerous as it looks. All you have to do is to ram the muzzle against the screen and press the trigger. It gives out a very powerful flash lasting five seconds, and in that time you'll be able to swing it round the room. Enough light will come back to give you a good view."

"It won't hurt Karellen?"

"Not if you aim low and sweep it upwards. That will give him time to accommodate-I suppose he has reflexes like ours, and we don't want to blind him."

Stormgren looked at the weapon doubtfully and hefted it in his hand. For the last few weeks his conscience had been p.r.i.c.king him. Karellen had always treated him with unmistakable affection, despite his occasional devastating frankness, and now that their time together was drawing to its close he did not wish to do anything that might spoil that relationship. But the Supervisor had received due warning, and Stormgren had the conviction that if the choice had been his Karellen would long ago have shown himself. Now the decision would be made for him: when their last meeting came to its end, Stormgren would gaze upon Karellen's face.

If, of course, Karellen had a face.

The nervousness that Stormgren had first felt had long since pa.s.sed away. Karellen was doing almost all the talking, weaving the long, intricate sentences of which he was so fond. Once this had seemed to Stormgren the most wonderful and certainly the most unexpected of all Karellen's gifts. Now it no longer appeared quite so marvelous, for he knew that like most of the Supervisor's abilities it was the result of sheer intellectual power and not of any special talent.

Karellen had time for any amount of literary composition when he slowed his thoughts down to the pace of human speech.

"Do not worry," he said, "about the Freedom League. It has been very quiet for the past month, and though it will revive again it is no longer a real danger. Indeed, since it's always valuable to know what your opponents are doing, the League is a very useful inst.i.tution. Should it ever get into financial difficulties I might even subsidize it."

Stormgren had often found it difficult to tell when Karellen was joking. He kept his face impa.s.sive and continued to listen.

"Very soon the League will lose another of its strongest arguments. There's been a good deal of criticism, mostly rather childish, of the special position you have held for the past few years. I found it very valuable in the early days of my administration, but now that the world is moving along the line that I planned, it can cease. In the future, all my dealings with Earth will be indirect and the office of Secretary-General can once again become what it was originally intended to be.

"During the next fifty years there will be many crises, but they will pa.s.s. Almost a generation from now, I shall reach the nadir of my popularity, for plans must be put into operation which cannot be fully explained at the time. Attempts may even be made to destroy me. But the pattern of the future is clear enough, and one day all these difficulties will be forgotten-even to a race with memories as long as yours."

The last words were spoken with such a peculiar emphasis that Stormgren immediately froze in his seat. Karellen never made accidental slips and even his indiscretions were calculated to many decimal places. But there was no time to ask questions-which certainly would not be answered-before the Supervisor had changed the subject again.

"You've often asked me about our long-term plans," he continued. "The foundation of the World State is, of course, only the first step. You will live to see its completion-but the change will be so imperceptible that few will notice it when it comes. After that there will be a pause for thirty years while the next generation reaches maturity. And then will come the day which we have promised. I am sorry that you will not be there."

Stormgren's eyes were open, but his gaze was fixed far beyond the dark barrier of the screen. He was looking into the future, imagining the day he would never see, when the great ships of the Overlords came down at last to Earth and were thrown open to the waiting world.

"On that day," continued Karellen, "the human mind will experience one of its very rare psychological discontinuities. But no permanent harm will be done: the men of that age will be more stable than their grandfathers. We will always have been part of their lives, and when they meet us we will not seem so-strange-as we would do to you."

Stormgren had never known Karellen in so contemplative a mood, but this gave him no surprise. He did not believe that he had ever seen more than a few facets of the Supervisor's personality: the real Karellen was unknown and perhaps unknowable to human beings. And once again Stormgren had the feeling that the Supervisor's real interests were elsewhere, and that he ruled Earth with only a fraction of his mind, as effortlessly as a master of three-dimensional chess may play a game of checkers.

Karellen continued his reverie, almost as if Stormgren were not there.

"Then there will be another pause, only a short one this time, for the world will be growing impatient. Men will wish to go out to the stars, to see the other worlds of the Universe and to join us in our work. For it is only beginning: not a thousandth of the suns in the Galaxy have ever been visited by the races of which we know. One day, Rikki, your descendants in their own ships will be bringing civilization to the worlds that are ripe to receive it-just as we are doing now."

Faintly across the gulf of centuries Stormgren could glimpse the future of which Karellen dreamed, the future towards which he was leading mankind. How far ahead? He could not even guess: there was no way in which he could measure Man's present stature against the standards of the Overlords.

Karellen had fallen silent and Stormgren had the impression that the Supervisor was watching him intently.

"It is a great vision," he said softly. "Do you bring it to all your worlds?"

"Yes," said Karellen, "all that can understand it."

Out of nowhere, a strangely disturbing thought came into Stormgren's mind.

"Suppose, after all, your experiment fails with Man? We have known such things in our own dealings with other races. Surely you have had your failures too?"

"Yes," said Karellen, so softly that Stormgren could scarcely hear him. "We have had our failures."

"And what do you do then?"

"We wait-and try again."

There was a pause lasting perhaps ten seconds. When Karellen spoke again, his words were m.u.f.fled and so unexpected that for a moment Stormgren did not react.

"Goodbye, Rikki!"

Karellen had tricked him-probably it was already too late. Stormgren's paralysis lasted only for a moment. Then in a single swift, well-practiced movement, he whipped out the flash-gun and jammed it against the screen.

The pine trees came almost to the edge of the lake, leaving along its border only a narrow strip of gra.s.s a few yards wide. Every evening when it was warm enough Stormgren would walk slowly along this strip to the landing-stage, watch the sunlight die upon the water, and then return to the house before the chill evening wind came up from the forest. The simple ritual gave him much contentment, and he would continue it as long as he had the strength.

Far away over the lake something was coming in from the west, flying low and fast. Aircraft were uncommon in these parts, unless one counted the transpolar liners which must be pa.s.sing overhead every hour of the day and night. But there was never any sign of their presence, save an occasional vapor trail high against the blue of the stratosphere. This machine was a small helicopter, and it was coming towards him with ominous determination. Stormgren glanced along the beach and saw that there was no chance of escape. Then he shrugged his shoulders and sat down on the wooden bench at the end of the jetty.

The reporter was so deferential that Stormgren found it surprising. He had almost forgotten that he was not only an elder statesman but, outside his own country, almost a mythical figure.

"Mr. Stormgren," the intruder began, "I'm very sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you would mind answering a few questions about the Overlords?"

Stormgren frowned slightly. After all these years, he still shared Karellen's dislike for the word.

"I do not think," he said, "that I can add a great deal to what has already been written elsewhere."

The reporter was watching him with a curious intentness.

"I thought that you might," he answered. "A rather strange story has just come to our notice. It seems that, nearly thirty years ago, one of the Science Bureau's technicians made some remarkable pieces of equipment for you. We wondered if you could tell us anything about it."

For a moment Stormgren was silent, his mind going back into the past. He was not surprised that the secret had been discovered: indeed it was amazing that it had taken so long. He wondered how it had happened, not that it mattered now.

He rose to his feet and began to walk back along the jetty, the reporter following a few paces behind.

"The story," he said, "contains a certain amount of truth. On my last visit to Karellen's ship I took some apparatus with me, in the hope that I might see the Supervisor. It was rather a foolish thing to do but-well, I was only sixty at the time."

He chuckled to himself and then continued.

"It's not much of a story to have brought you all this way. You see, it didn't work."

"You saw nothing?"

"No, nothing at all. I'm afraid you'll have to wait-but after all, there are only twenty years to go."

Twenty years to go. Yes, Karellen had been right. By then the world would be ready, as it had not been when he had spoken that same lie to Duval thirty years before.