Michael didn’t know, then, that the seed had been planted. It had not yet taken root; it just sat there in the darkness of his subconscious mind, rubbing a little, but beginning to be encased, like a grain of sand in an oyster, by layers of protective preconceptions. But the intrusion was a seed, not a sterile piece of grit. The telephone call he got the next day started it growing.

Typically, Galen didn’t waste any words.

“Have you resolved your latest problem?” he asked, as soon as he had identified himself to his surprised listener.

“No, she’s still missing. Where are you?”

“ Paris, of course. I told you I’d be here till the end of this week. Michael, I want you to go over to my office and-”

“You’re calling me from Paris? Why?”

“If you’ll be quiet for a minute, I’ll tell you. I’m due at a symposium in about four and a half minutes. Go over to my office and pick up an envelope my secretary has for you. I’ve already spoken to her.”

“You want me to mail it to you?” Michael asked, groping.

“If I wanted something mailed to me, I’d have my secretary mail it,” Gordon said impatiently. “The envelope is for you. Go and get it now. Don’t make any decisions until you’ve read the contents.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I don’t believe I’ve used any words of over three syllables, have I? I must go now. I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I get back. And remember, don’t do anything drastic until you’ve seen that envelope.”

The receiver went down with a decisive click. Galen never bothered with hellos and good-byes.

Michael hung up. There was no use trying to call back. He didn’t know what hotel Galen was staying at, and it was more than likely that Galen would refuse to add anything to his enigmatic message even if he could be located. He was never obscure except by choice.

Michael got up and wandered over to the window. It was raining again. The sky, what little he could see of it, was a dirty gray, and the puddles in the alley reflected the sallow light with a sheen of oily iridescence. Even on the fourth floor, with the window closed, he could hear the snarl of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the street. Absently, Michael drew his initials in the smeary film on the inside of the pane. The hell with it. He wasn’t going all the way across town on a day like this just to pick up an envelope.

The foul evening darkened, the rain beat a peremptory tattoo against the window. Michael wandered the apartment like a caged lion, unable to settle down or even to understand the strange sense of uneasiness that grew, slowly but steadily. Unable to concentrate and unwilling to go out, he puttered with small jobs he had been putting off; he put a new light bulb in the kitchen and started to cook himself something to eat. It was then that he discovered he had given Napoleon the hamburger. There was nothing else fit to eat except various things in cans, and he realized he wasn’t hungry anyhow. He was too nervous to eat.

Nervous. Slowly Michael let himself down into a chair and considered the word. He reviewed the symptoms: taut muscles, mildly queasy stomach, restlessness, general malaise of mind. Yes, that was his trouble; he was as nervous as a cat… He gave the somnolent Napoleon a look of hate, and revised the figure of speech. He hadn’t had the symptoms for years, that was why he had been so slow to recognize them-not since college exams, or the early days of his working career, when a particular interview, or letter, or telephone call might make or break his new-hatched confidence in himself. So why now, when there was nothing hanging over him that really mattered?

The thing hit him with the violence of an earthquake, but it was nothing physical, nothing that any of the conventional senses would have recognized. Yet it was as peremptory as the sudden shrilling of a telephone in a silent room. It summoned, like a shout; it tugged at the mind like a grasping hand. It lasted for only a second or two, in measurable time; but while it lasted, the room faded out and gray fog closed in around him. He was conscious of nothing except the calling. Even the hard seat of the chair under him and the solidity of the floor beneath his feet seemed to dissolve. It stopped as abruptly as it had begun. There was no fading out, merely a cessation.

Michael found himself on his feet. His face was wet with perspiration, and his knees were weak. Blinking like a man who has emerged from a cave into bright sunshine, he looked around the familiar kitchen, and found its very normalcy an affront. The table was still a table; it rocked slightly under the pressure of his hand as it always did. It ought to have changed into an elephant or a tortoise. The view from the kitchen window should not be the normal view of night darkness; it ought to show an alien sun over some weird landscape. The thing that had invaded his mind was as shattering and as inexplicable as any such transformation.

But the most incredible thing about the experience was that he accepted it. He knew, not only what the calling was, but who had sent it. Knew? The verb was too weak; there was no word in the language for the absolute, suprarational conviction that filled his mind.

He was still a little unsteady on his feet as he crossed the room. He noticed that Napoleon was no longer in his favorite place by the door. Evidently the cat had left, and he hadn’t even heard him go.

His desk was covered with papers, notes, books. Michael didn’t touch any of them. Slumped in his chair, his eyes fixed on vacancy, he thought. It was one of the hardest jobs he had ever done in his life; methodically, he examined and demolished all the guideposts he had established in the past ten days-as well as a few mental monuments that had been standing a lot longer. It left his conscious mind pretty bare. He didn’t try to construct any new theories to fill it up. He couldn’t yet.

The urgent impulse that still gripped him, even though its stimulus had vanished, did not interfere with his thinking; it occupied a level much more basic than reason or conscious thought. It was rather like an overpowering hunger or thirst. But he couldn’t yield to it yet; a man who walks along a contaminated stream knows, even though his throat is a dusty agony, that he cannot relieve the pain until he finds clear water.

Why hadn’t he gone out, that afternoon, to get the envelope Galen wanted him to have? The office was closed now, and he didn’t know the secretary’s last name, or address.

The contents of that envelope must concern Randolph, and they must be important. That conclusion wasn’t intuitive; it was the result of logic. Galen’s reaction that night, when he learned the identity of the fugitive, had been markedly peculiar. He hadn’t been merely surprised; he had been worried. That last, hasty spate of advice had also been uncharacteristic: Don’t do anything, don’t take any action whatsoever. I’ll discuss it with you when I get back.

But Galen had decided the matter couldn’t wait. That oblique reference at the beginning of the telephone conversation indicated that he had been thinking about the Randolphs, and strongly suggested that the rest of the conversation concerned them. Galen thought nothing of trans-Atlantic telephone calls, or any other obstacle that stood in the way of what he wanted done, but he did not extend himself over a mere whim. The material must be important. And if it were favorable, noncontroversial, Galen wouldn’t be so cautious about it.

Unless one of the Randolphs had been Galen’s patient. Michael dismissed that theory at once. Under no circumstances would Galen discuss a patient’s case with him. No, the connection had to be something else; and Michael had a pretty good idea as to what it must be.

He tried to remember his first impressions of Galen, but he couldn’t pin them down; Galen had just been one of the Old Man’s friends, too antique to be interesting. Galen must be over sixty-he had to be, if he and the Old Man had been at school together in Europe, before the last big war. He didn’t look it. Physical fitness was something of a fetish with him. Not surprising, perhaps, after the two-year hell of a concentration camp and the desperate years of underground fighting that had preceded the camp. More surprising was Galen’s mental stability. There was a certain ruthlessness under that passionless exterior of his, but he was as free of bitterness as he was free of optimism. It was revealing, perhaps, that he never spoke of the war years, or of the wife and small son who had been devoured by the holocaust. His reference to his boyhood pet was one of the few times Michael had ever heard him mention his childhood. His parents, too…