Ten From Infinity, Paul W. Fairman [intellectual books to read txt] 📗

brassiere and panties underneath.

"Take off your clothes."

Rhoda unbuttoned the housecoat and slipped it off. That strange excitement showed in her eyes now.

The android pointed. "Take those off."

As she unhooked her brassiere, Rhoda said, "My head aches."

"Your head does not ache."

"You are right, my head does not ache."

She slipped out of the panties and stood naked. The android regarded her. "You are different."

"Of course. I am a woman."

"I want to make love." As Rhoda stood motionless, helpless, he spoke very positively. "You make love on the bed. We will go into the bedroom ..."

Later, she was never able to recall any details of that next half-hour. In defense of her own sanity, she was able to block the incident from her mind. But as she lay naked on the bed, looking up at the man she knew as John Dennis, she thought of her mind as being in two sections. One section, the part of her consciousness that clung to reality, kept saying, I want to cry. If I could cry, everything would be all right. Why can't I cry?

The other part was a pool of quivering excitement. She lay motionless, watching John Dennis undress, garment by garment, until he, too, was naked.

His body was not perfect, yet it had an individual perfection of its own in Rhoda's eyes. The skin was smooth and white, the legs and hips firm and masculine. The chest was broad and Rhoda wanted to put her hands on it and feel John Dennis' hands on her own body.

He stood looking at her, a little like a child, she[Pg 71] thought tenderly; a child waiting to be told what to do. She did not account this as strange—only as a shyness in him. She held out her arms.

He lowered himself onto the bed beside her. She put her arms around him and pressed her lips to his. She waited. Nothing happened.

He was neither cold nor passionate. He was neither hostile nor friendly. He was nothing.

"You wanted to make love," Rhoda whispered. "Here I am. Take me. Take me."

Instead, he disengaged himself, raised himself up on his elbows and looked down at her. "You are quite different."

She did not know whether to be complimented or offended. "I'm about the same as every other woman."

"You are different than I am."

"Of course I'm different." Was he joking? He didn't seem to be. He was deadly serious as he began examining her breasts.

This is mad. This is insane. Why can't I cry?

But the other part of her mind quivered with her body as John Dennis went over it, inch by inch. He appeared to be trying to memorize it. She moved and turned as his hands directed, a new kind of fire rising within her. She waited. He touched her and waited for a response. There was none; nor any feeling within her at that moment except the strange fire inside and the ache of her taut groin tendons.

John Dennis touched her again and noted the sudden jerk and quiver of her response. He became grotesquely, academically interested. He touched the same nerve surface again and studied her face for the response.

Her eyes were closed and her lower lip was gripped in her teeth. "No," she gasped. "Not that way. Not that way—please."

She could have been pleading with a brick wall. John Dennis continued—her natural reactions interested him. He frowned and seemed puzzled by the excitement he generated within her.

Then she cried out and rolled away from him and lay[Pg 72] sobbing, her face buried in the pillow. But they were dry sobs; strange, tense sounds filling a questionable and dubious ecstasy.

"You are cruel," she whimpered.

"Cruel?"

"You make love so brutally."

He considered this and then got off the bed. "I do not like making love."

He began putting on his clothes. She watched him, completely defeated. "Where do you come from?" she demanded. "Who are you? Why did you want to know about the man with the broken leg?"

He turned from putting on his shirt and stood motionless, looking down into her eyes and after a moment or two it did not matter to Rhoda again. It mattered no more than it had in the beginning. The strange fire had not been quenched by what had occurred. It was still there, in her mind more than in her body, but finding its boundaries was not important either.

"Are you going?"

"Yes."

"Will you come back?"

"I will come back. I want you to find out from Frank Corson what happened to the androids."

"He doesn't know."

"Have him find out for you."

"I can't do that."

"Then I will not come back."

Somehow, in the part of Rhoda Kane's mind that was beyond her control, the thought that John Dennis might not return took on the proportions of a disaster. Her feeling was akin to panic as she said, "I will make him find out."

"Then I will come back."

"Please. I will wait for you."

Les King answered the knock on the door and broke into a smile. "Well, talk about luck! I've been looking all over hell for you. Come in. Come in."

The tenth android was already in. He walked across[Pg 73] the room and turned to look back at Les King with the outside light behind him.

King returned the gaze and wondered if he was afraid. It was an odd thing to wonder about. A man should know his own emotions. But King could not quite analyze the ones that struck him at that moment. For one thing, he'd discounted most of what Taber had said. There was something going on here, true—something big. When the government could cover up a murder in Greenwich Village, there had to be a big score at stake. And there had been a murder—but no cops, no police cars, nothing. Only a couple of guys in an unmarked truck walking out with what could have been a rolled-up carpet. They'd swiped his pictures and told him to keep his mouth shut.

This last was what made Les King mad. He'd found the story. It was his by every right. But when they were ready to break it they'd do it through some privileged Washington newspaperman who'd get it on a silver platter. The hell with that stuff. It would take more than a shadowy character like Brent Taber to scare him off.

He looked at the man in the blue suit and said, "You've been lucky. They're after you."

"Who is they?"

"Taber. The government crowd. The police, too, maybe. You killed that guy in the Village, didn't you?" Les King had decided a bold approach was the best way. But he was no fool. He kept his hand on the doorknob and watched the man carefully. "By the way, you haven't told me your name."

"John Dennis."

"You look like a man named Sam Baker. He disappeared about ten years ago—from a little town upstate."

"I am John Dennis."

King shrugged. "Okay, you're John Dennis. All I want to do is stay on top of this thing and have the inside track when it breaks."

"Brent Taber told you to forget about it."

King did not like the odd feeling of helplessness that seemed to have a grip on him. He was not alarmed,[Pg 74] though. Over and above this was a sense of excitement. There was money here—he knew damned well there was money here.

"You want money, don't you?"

The question startled King. Could the guy read his mind? "Who the hell doesn't?" he retorted defensively. "If you're heeled you've got it made."

Somehow King felt that the pressure, the odd excitement, lessened in intensity. His nerves, he conceded, were sure playing tricks.

"There are some things I want. I will tell you where they are. I will give you money for them."

An espionage approach? King wondered. In a way, he hoped it was. He could always get clear. When the time was right, when he had the story locked, he'd go to the FBI with it. He had a quick vision of a spread in Life, a title: "I Broke the Russian Spy Ring." His own by-line.

"That sounds touchy," he said.

"I will tell you where to go and what to do."

"I'll have to know more than that."

"I will tell you what to do."

John Dennis left without saying good-bye.

Les King stared at the inner side of the closed door. "Jesus!" he muttered.

But the excitement was creeping back.[Pg 75]

8

Brent Taber stood in front of the desk of Authority and said, "Mr. Porter, I don't think you people realize the gravity of this situation."

Porter's eyes were frosty. "And just what gives you that idea?"

"The fact that I'm being hamstrung at every turn. Men I assigned to search out the last android have been taken off the job, transferred away from me without notice."

"You speak of being hamstrung." Porter pronounced the term with an inflection of disgust, as though it were a vulgarism no gentleman would use. "You say we do not realize the gravity of the situation. Perhaps we realize it far more than you do. It may be that your activities have been indirectly curtailed because you have not recognized the vital need of harmony in government."

"Are you telling me Crane's ego is still smarting?"

"Senator Crane did, in the spirit of co-operation, mention certain leaks in your department."

"What in hell are you talking about?"

"I'd watch my tone if I were you, Taber. You aren't talking to one of your legmen now!"

Taber's teeth came tight together. "I'm sorry. Let me repeat the question. Exactly what was the nature of the leak to which the Senator referred?"

"A tape—transcribed at one of your top-secret meetings."

Taber's fist closed and opened. "I guess maybe I have been lax," he said softly.[Pg 76]

Porter, grimly happy to have made his point, went on. "As to policy up above, I'll be quite frank. We have not necessarily gone along with your theory that the so-called androids were from outer space."

"Then where do you think they originated?"

"We have put data into the calculators on that point. So far, the results have been inconclusive."

"That's too bad."

"Your sarcasm is uncalled for. I am quite willing to tell you, however, that we have been proceeding in the matter. You are aware, no doubt, of the recent space shot that ended disastrously?"

"Who isn't?"

Still insistent upon treating Taber like a backward child, Porter said, "The missile was safely launched and made five orbits and then suffered destruction."

"There was a lot of newspaper copy written on the failure; a lot of questions asked as to the cause."

"The releases were entirely true," Porter said with prim severity. "There was malfunction of crucial units under stress. But another phase was not made public. The astronaut's mission—one of them, at least—was to hunt outer space for foreign bodies of any description."

"What did he report?"

"Nothing."

"I recall a story printed by some Washington columnist that some of the code picked up from the missile was not translated for the press. This, he stated, in view of the Administration's current 'Open End' policy on such matters, was strange."

"If you're implying that we censored certain information, that's quite true. In the public interest."

"To keep scientific information out of Russian hands?"

"In this case, no. The astronaut fell victim to a psychological stress that was unforeseen. What he sent made no sense whatever. We blame the medical men for not finding the flaw in his psyche."

"And I would be entirely out of line in assuming he did discover hostile foreign bodies and was destroyed by them?"

"Entirely," Porter snapped.[Pg 77]

Brent Taber's eyes were stony. "But I am to assume that you're asking for my resignation."

Now Porter shrugged. "If that is the way you see it, I can, of course, only tender my regrets."

"Well, you won't have to. I'm not resigning."

The sharp declaration made Porter blink. "It's rather unusual that a man, after a vote of no confidence—"

"To hell with that. If a tape got out of my office, it's my fault. I'll grant that. But there's more to this. I'm willing to bet the man who told you was the same one who engineered the steal."

"That's ridiculous! Are you accusing Senator Crane of—?"

"I'm accusing an opportunist-demagogue of playing fast and loose with national safety to further his own ends and salve his ego. I'm accusing the men above me of being too weak-kneed to back their own against outside interference."

"I'll stand for no insults from you, Taber!"

"You'll take it and like it," Brent Taber said savagely. "You'll take it because you can't knock me out of my office overnight. It will take time. You've got to go up through the command and you'll have to go pretty high before you'll find anyone who'll do it with