“Except for one thing,” he said calmly. “You’re a carrier of the nekronic infection, as I think the People of the Face may have planned from the beginning. As a spur to prevent just what you’ve suggested.”

“Why are you going, then?” I demanded. “It has nothing to do with you.”

“Yes, it does have. Two things. First—I don’t know why I’m going. The order came and I must obey it.”

“From the second-stage Mechandroid?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes. The second reason is”—He looked up at me over his shoulder. He was kneeling to puzzle over the Essen machine, and gave me a sudden cool smile. “I go under orders,” he said. “You go because of the nekronic spur. Do you know why Paynter must go too?”

“Because you’ve got him hypnotized,” I said. “Why else?”

“Paynter is infected too.” I gaped at him.

“Of course he is. Why else did he fail to kill you when he knew the danger you carried wherever you went? But suppose he had killed you—and the murders went on? The authorities would have had to look further—they would have found Paynter himself. So long as you lived, you were the obvious scapegoat.”

“All right,” I said slowly. “It adds up. Is that the reason why he has to go with us? Does your second-stage age Mechandroid care about that?”

“Of course not.” Belem had turned from the mystifying Essen machine and was working carefully with the milky-crystal globe now, his large fingers moving over it with the same clumsy deftness I had watched so often in De Kalb’s identical fingers.

“Of course not. The real reason is very different. You’ve probably guessed it already. Do you not know, really, why you have trusted me so far? If your mind had put up any real opposition, I couldn’t have done all I did with it. Don’t you know why you and I must go on to the world of the Face together—as you first set out to do?”

I stood there in the dusty cavern, in perfect silence, not surprised to find that I was trembling a little as his metal eyes met mine. After a long time I said, very softly, in a shaken, questioning voice, “De Kalb—De Kalb?”

“I think so,” he said calmly. Then he reached out and with one finger stirred the heavy dust on the floor. He looked at me, smiling wryly. “De Kalb is there. De Kalb is that. But here—” He struck his head a light rap, “Here I think he still lives. Latent. In abeyance. But still here.”

I sat down suddenly, in the dust that may once have been Jerry Cortland. I was remembering the sudden oblivion hat had briefly overtaken all of us who were duplicates of the sleepers in the cave as those original bodies fell apart.

“There would be no reason for you to go on to the World of the Face alone,” he said, “if you went alone. But you won’t. You can’t. You never have been alone, have you, in his era? Always Topaz—who is Dr. Essen, asleep—or Paynter, who is Murray, asleep, or I—who am De Kalb—were with you. None of us knew. All of us have been moving along the lines of some pattern vaster than we can guess. Only now it begins to emerge a little.”

As I drew a breath to speak, the sound of the opening panel startled us both. Only Paynter, standing motionless in be grip of his hypnosis, did not move. My quick start was futile but Belem’s two hands covered the crystal globe, ready, I think, to activate it and throw out the temporary force-field that would isolate us from attack—for awhile.

22. Reunion

We were both expecting soldiers to come pouring from the transmitter. But no one came through the open panel. Instead, a voice spoke. A woman’s voice, cool, clear, level.

“Ira?” it said. “Mr. Cortland? Colonel Murray, are you there?”

Dr. Essen! I thought. Letta Essen! An instant later Topaz came alone across the threshold.

It was Topaz and yet—it was Letta Essen too, more clearly than I had ever seen her before in the girl’s amazingly adaptable features.

“I expected this,” Belem said with perfect calm. “I didn’t even send for her, I was so sure she would have to come. It’s the pattern, Cortland. It’s working itself out faster and faster now, beyond our control, I think. Is she Letta Essen?”

I nodded in bewilderment. The voice was not Dr. Essen’s, of course, for it came from the vocal cords of Topaz, but it was not Topaz’s voice either. It was cool, emotionless, nobody’s voice. Dispassion speaking aloud. And the face was Topaz’s face but changed, different.

I had seen the almost fluid mobility with which every emotion altered those lovely features but I had not been prepared for a change like this. And the ego, the soul, of Topaz was submerged. A tight, wary blackness was all that showed now—that and a sort of bright alarm.

“The soldiers!” she was saying a little breathlessly now, as she hurried toward us across the dust which was her own disintegrated body. “They’re following me, Ira. It is Ira?” Her eyes were questioning on Belem’s face.

The Mechandroid nodded. “They’re following you?” he demanded. “How much do they know? Never mind—you can tell us later. Activate your machine—quickly!” And he gestured toward it.

She dropped to her knees beside the metal plate, hesitated, touched it doubtfully. “The connections have been changed,” she said. “I can put them back in order but”—she glanced up—“it may take time.”

“How long?”

“Too long.” She looked from face to face, a little of Topaz’s facile despair coming through the calm. “The soldiers—” Belem’s breath hissed through his teeth. We turned, seeing the panel in the wall opening again. Bright uniforms gleamed through the gap.

Belem’s hands flashed with blinding speed above the crystal egg. Then a tower of golden light shot up like a fountain and spread out above us. It thinned as it spread, came showering down again into an enclosing hemisphere. Its brightness faded until we were looking through amber glass at the soldiers who came swarming from the transmitter, more and more with every opening and closing of the panel. Their weapons spat fire at us.

A burst of starry light sparkled on the amber of our shield and died. Another nova flared and faded against the screen. And another.

“We’re safe,” Belem said calmly. “For a few days, until the power dies. By then the second-stage Mechandroid should waken. But meanwhile, Dr. Essen—you had better repair your machine if you can.”

She nodded, the bright curls tumbling. Then she rose and stepped carefully around the motionless, glittering tree toward the milky egg that was projecting our temporary salvation.

“I can’t remember—very clearly,” she said. “There was light—and then suddenly I knew I was myself—with some memories of a girl called Topaz.” She frowned. “Maybe it would be clearer if—may I see your projector, Ira? Belem? Which are you, now?” She looked searchingly into his face.

“I am Belem,” the Mechandroid said. “Do you know what it was that roused you out of the Topaz-state and reawakened the Essen mind? We are nearly sure now that, in the moment the time-axis shell and the sleeping bodies inside it crumbled, their sleeping minds merged with the minds of the physical duplicates. Why is not yet known. Why the minds of Paynter, Topaz and myself remained dominant while Cortland’s submerged the mind of his host is still—”

He paused. For Topaz—Dr. Essen—was bending above the luminous egg. Now she seized it, lifted it high, and with one smooth gesture smashed it against the rocky floor.

It was Topaz, of course—not Letta Essen, never Letta Essen.

The amber shell above us began to rift and shimmer into tatters. Beyond it the armed men pressed forward, shouting. A lance of hot white light shot past Belem’s head and spattered fire from the rocky wall behind him. Topaz laughed, a shrill, high sound of pure excitement.

Then Belem moved.