Agent of the Unknown Page 4

  "You see, the first time I tried to take the doll from you, you knew it wasn't serious. I'm a friend of yours, I'd give her back, and so on. The second time, you were concentrating on feelings of hostility. And there were fireworks that time.

  "It would be interesting, if my hand would stand it, to try more experiments. I wonder, for instance, whether she could be taken from you while you were asleep. I don't think she could ... More phlomis?"

  "No, thank you. I haven't finished this."

  "You've hardly touched it, in fact," Kunitz said, smiling. He leaned forward. "You know, Don, it's less than a week since you found the doll. And yet you've changed, changed so much in some ways that I hardly know you. This must be the quickest 'cure' on record. Imagine Don Haig refusing a drink! Do you notice the change yourself?"

  "Yes," Don answered shortly. He felt embarrassed and annoyed. No man likes to have been reformed in spite of himself.

  "It's not only the drinking, it's—you seem more mature than you did. More responsible. Personally, I'm all in favor of the change." Kunitz laughed. "You look lots better physically, too, though there's still plenty of room for improvement. But are you sure you want to keep the doll? If she's responsible for the change in you? Yesterday you were pretty doubtful about it."

  "I—yes." Don hesitated, moistening his lips. "That part's all right." He didn't want Kunitz to think he was growing hysterical and nervous. "... I think somebody is following me."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Last night, when I was coming home from Payne's, I kept hearing a rustling in the bushes. It stopped whenever I stopped."

  "Probably one of the robot gardeners. They do a lot of work at night."

  "Well, it didn't sound like one. I went on home. I was just going to sleep when I heard a noise—it's hard to describe—a sort of light tinkling."

  "You mean, like somebody walking around outside your shelter?"

  "Not at all like that. This morning when I got up I looked around. The sand in my shelter and just outside it was full of tiny pits."

  Kunitz spat his Betla chew into the corner of the room and poured himself another glass of phlomis. "Might be sand fleas."

  "Oh, balch! There aren't any sand fleas on Fyon. I ought to know. Besides, they weren't that sort of pits. They were tiny and hard, as if the sand had been pressed down into them. They were the sort of pits, Kunitz, you get when somebody's using an eye-beam that isn't focused quite right."

  Kunitz got up and began to walk around the room. "An eye-beam. Yes, I suppose it could be. Yesterday you dropped a lot of hints about some valuable art object you had, and you gave a convincing demonstration that there was some sort of force field around you. That same evening you think you're followed, and somebody uses an eye-beam on you. Pretty quick work. But it would be."

  "Who would be using an eye-beam?"

  "Well, of course they're illegal. But the law is broken pretty generally by those who have enough tug. Cult leaders use eye-beams pretty generally, I've been told. A few wealthy people have them. And of course the SSP."

  "I thought of that. It sounds more like them. But would the SSP be using one that was badly focused?"

  "Um, yes, that's a point. Our miniature government is nothing if not efficient. And besides, art objects are not the sort of thing the SSP interests itself in. If you were a scientist, now ..."

  "I don't like being followed and spied upon."

  "Who would?"

  "It isn't amusing when it happens to you. I wish I had some way of drawing whoever's watching me out into the open."

  "Whatever it is, it's obviously connected with the doll. I still think you ought to get rid of the thing. But I tell you, Don. Why don't you use the doll as bait?"

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Well, it seems unlikely that the doll can be taken away from you. By force, anyhow. If you show the doll around—exhibit it—it ought to provoke your watcher into some sort of action. It might draw him out where you can get a look at him."

  "Um." Haig got up to go. "Time for me to collect more dakdak splinters at the restaurant. Your idea about that doll doesn't seem bad. But I'd hate to endanger her."

  "I don't think you would."

  "I hope not. I—" Don stopped abruptly.

  "What's the matter?" Kunitz asked, looking up.

  "Nothing. I had an idea, that's all."

  "What was it?"

  "Nothing worth repeating. Foolishness. I'll be seeing you, Kunitz." He nodded to his host and started down the path.

  The idea was, of course, foolishness. Kunitz an agent of the SSP! After the story Kunitz had told him, after what he knew of Kunitz himself! It was absurd. But he had had the idea. Why had he thought of it?

  Chapter Five — The Circus

  "There's going to be a show in Baade tonight," Payne said. He was leaning against the door jamb of the restaurant kitchen, chewing leisurely on a square cud of Betla nut. "I don't know how they ever came to let a thing like that land on Fyon, when they're so careful about 'keeping up the atmosphere' that they won't even let us have tri-di sets. (Don't get me wrong—I like Fyon. It's right the way it is.)

  "I hear it's a kind of a circus, with robots and some animals. Probably doesn't amount to much—only one live human performer, the owner. But anyhow ... I'm going myself, and I'll let you off early if you want to go."

  "Thanks," Don said. He wasn't at all sure he'd take in the circus, but it would be nice to get done with the dakdak pods a little ahead of time.

  Payne lingered. "By the way, you still got that thing, that doll, you showed me?"

  "Yes," Don answered without looking up. His hands were slippery with dakdak pulp, and his back was tired.

  "You have any trouble with it?"

  "No, none." The reply was perfectly accurate; since the talk with Kunitz, there had been no pittings in the sand outside Don's hut, nor had he felt that he was being followed. Perhaps he had imagined it in the first place.

  "Well, you be careful," Payne said, preparing to depart. "It's a beautiful thing, and I'd like to see it again some time. But it's bound to cause trouble. Or somebody might pick your pocket, and then where would you be? You ought to sell it—you'd be rich."

  It was quite late that night when Don decided to take a look at the circus. He had passed the evening as he passed all his evenings now, in looking at the doll. The occupation might have been passive and somnolent; but Don never took his eyes from the tiny image without feeling that he had been engaged in something richly adventurous, something as full of hazard as it was of pleasure. Perhaps it was this sense of possible danger that made him get up suddenly and start toward the square where the circus was. For tonight, at least, it seemed a refuge, an anchorage, a sort of antidote.

  The circus, under its small pneumatent, was almost ready to close. Only a handful of spectators still lingered. The sides had been put up on the animal cages. One of the robot puppet shows, Life Among the Insect Men, was still jerking mechanically through its antics, but the others had been folded away, and the personnel of the mind-reading act, two sleekly intelligent hexapods, were already hopping into their baskets for the night. The lights were being put out. A robot gardener was clanking away at its nocturnal duties in the greenery on the edge of the square.

  Don watched for a moment and then turned to go, his shoulders lifted in a shrug. The impulse that had brought him to the circus had already spent itself. "Excuse me," a voice behind him said, "but are you the man who has the weeping doll?"

  Don faced the sound, a little startled. He had not known that anyone was near him, and besides, the voice had a muffled, padded quality that fell unpleasantly on the ear.

  The person who addressed him was a big, hulking man who ought to have been even bigger than he was. His clothes hung loosely on him. His large-framed body seemed to have shrunk in on itself, and the flesh of his heavy face sagged away from craggy, jutting bones. He had extremely light eyes. He was dressed in white.

&nbs
p; "I'm the owner of the show," the man said, as if in explanation. He coughed. "About the doll ... What an attraction it would be!"

  Don laughed. "You mean you want the doll for an exhibit in your show, Mr.—?"

  "Bendel's the name," the man answered. "No, not that. Though, as I said, she'd be wonderful. The fact is, I'm suffering from a fatal disease."

  Involuntarily Don moved a little away. "Oh, it's not contagious," Bendel said, with a touch of irritation. "It won't hurt anyone but me ... Could I see the doll?"

  Don hesitated. In an attempt to follow Kunitz' advice, he had shown the doll to Payne at the restaurant, and to Henry at the bar. Payne had been deeply impressed and a little afraid; Henry had insisted with nervous vehemence that it must be a fake. But there was no real reason why Don should let a stranger see the doll.

  There were eagerness and anxiety on the man's face. Behind him Don heard the hexapods snoring in their baskets; the noise, illogically, reassured him. He produced the doll.

  Bendel drew a deep breath. He made no attempt to touch the little image. "It's not quite like the one in the museum," he said after a moment. "The expression is a little different ... and the pose of the arms ... Could I have it for a couple of hours?"

  Don's surprise must have shown in his face. Bendel shifted his eyes. "I—the fact is—I'd pay you well for it. I'm not a rich man, but anything I have—I mean ... Come into my office, and I'll tell you about it."

  He led Don into a cubicle at one end of the brown pneumatent. He opened a low cupboard and got out a bottle and tumblers of yellowish green glax. Don noticed the faint, hair like scars of Dumortine use on his wrists. "Rum," Bendel said, indicating the bottle, and then, when there was a sliding rustle from the bottom of the cupboard: "It's only a Saturnian lizard—he's sick ... Your health."

  Don took the drink. He sipped at it. It tasted good, he enjoyed it. No more than that. He felt a sharp, irritated nostalgia for the fun he had used to get out of drinking. It hadn't all been arthritis and hangovers, by any means. It was the doll who was responsible for the change.

  Bendel put his glass down empty. "I want to hold the doll," he said simply. "I want to hold her in my hand for a couple of hours."

  Don studied the surface of the liquor in his glass. "Why?" he asked with equal simplicity.

  "Well, you see I have this disease. That's the reason why my voice sounds the way it does. (If I didn't think it would frighten you, I'd let you see me without cosmilac. That would convince you.) The doctors say it has something to do with the corpuscles in the blood. Hardly anybody has it."

  Don gave a grunt intended to express sympathy. "But what's the connection with your wanting the doll?"

  "That's what I'm trying to tell you," Bendel said with a touch of stiffness. "When I got the first symptoms, I went to the group doctors, and they told me I'd be dead within three years. That was not quite three years ago.

  "What was I to do? They'd had consultation after consultation, and at the end they'd given me my death warrant. And by a nasty sort of death. I heard about a quack, a kind of faith-healer and astrologer, and I went to him, This was in Marsport, in the poor part of town."

  The light in the little canvas cubicle was yellowish, not the usual clear artificial daylight tint. One of the animals in the cages to the left howled briefly, just at the limit of audibility. Don set down his drink. "What did your quack say?" he asked.

  "He said my disease was caused by the sun's having reached a point, in its 200,000,000 years' journey around the galaxy, where there were all sorts of harmful radiations. Only a very few people were sensitive to them, but I was one of the people. That's what he said.

  "I asked him if there was any cure, and he said there was. He had a lisping way of talking that made everything he said sound like he was making fun of you. Anyhow, he told me that the weeping doll in the museum on Terra, if I could be exposed to the emanation from it, would cure me.

  "I don't know whether I believed him, exactly. But of course I decided to try it. I looked up the schedule, and the doll was just about due to go on display. I went to Terra and waited. She was on display for a week. The crowds were terrific. But I did manage, for three days out of the week, to get right in front of her case and stay there for—oh, maybe half an hour.

  "Then I went back to the group doctors. I didn't tell them what I'd been doing. They made a lot of tests and kept me in bed for a week with some kind of meter strapped on my chest, and then they told me—they were very surprised—that the disease had been arrested. I would live at least a year more than they had said at first. I'm in that year now."

  Don nodded. The story was adding up. His head was beginning to ache.

  "The doll isn't due to go on exhibit for another four years," Bendel said: "I asked the museum authorities to let me see the doll in private, but of course they refused. They must get lots of requests like that.

  "Your doll—you see, the fact is, she's very much like the one in the museum. Almost her twin. If you could let me hold her in my hand for a couple of hours, I think"—his voice sank almost into blurred inaudibility—"I think I'd live."

  Don chewed his lower lip. He realized without surprise that it didn't make the slightest difference whether or not he believed Bendel. A decisive part of his mind, a part with which his consciousness had no concern, had resolved that he wasn't going to part with the doll. Not even for a couple of hours? Not even, possibly, to save a life? He didn't know about that. But he wasn't going to let Bendel have the doll.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "It's impossible."

  A long moment passed before Bendel sighed. "People are selfish," he said, "selfish!" He rubbed a trembling finger over his lips. "... But I want to warn you anyway, for your own good.

  "Have you noticed any changes in your personality, your character, since you've had the doll?"

  Don gave him an involuntarily startled glance.

  "Of course you have," Bendel said with satisfaction.

  "You could have found that out from anyone in Baade," Don observed.

  "Maybe. But I know what the real reason was that the museum authorities wouldn't let me have the doll. Their getting so many requests is only part of it. The dolls are dangerous."

  Don made a contemptuous noise.

  "Oh, it's true," Bendel said mournfully. "After they wouldn't let me see the doll in private, I made friends with one of the museum attendants. I had hopes that he might.

  "He couldn't arrange it. Maybe he didn't want to. There is always that terrible human selfishness. But he used to go and stand in front of the doll himself, you know, for hours. He stole the keys. He said he felt as if he'd been cold all his life and only, when he saw the doll, did he feel warm."

  It was a hit; Don's fingers tightened on the empty glass. He deliberately relaxed them. "Everyone knows the doll in the museum is unsettling," he observed.

  "Oh, yes. But his personality changed, his character. At first it was an improvement. Perhaps you've noticed that. Then he began to lose weight and complain of pains in the bones.

  "I heard the end of the story by accident. One day he was missing. They looked all over the museum for him. It's a big place, you know, spread out over a couple of hectares. Finally they found a pool of slime in front of the storage case where the weeping doll was kept. His signet ring was in the middle of the pool."

  Don managed a contemptuous laugh. "I'm too old to be frightened by slime deaths," he said. "Stories like that are more effective when the hearer is under twelve years of age."

  "Oh, yes. But I'm not trying to frighten you. The fact is, there's a strange corrosive kind of life in the dolls. You won't let me hold your doll for a couple of hours, when it might cure me. Might save my life. Very well. That's between you and your communion with the infinite. But I want to urge you to get rid of the doll. Do anything with it—sell it, give it to somebody, throw it in the garbage reducer. Get rid of it! It's beautiful, and wonderful, and terribly dangerous."

  Bendel was trem
bling. In the silence there was a sliding rustle from the cupboard where the Saturnian lizard was in hospital. Don pulled the weeping doll from his pocket and looked at it.

  Bendel's shaking had stopped. He was watching Haig intently. Don licked his lips. He touched the doll's cheek with his forefinger, and it was wet. He put her back in his pocket slowly and deliberately.

  Bendel threw back his head and laughed. He laughed like a hyena. Don saw that there was hair on his tongue.

  Chapter Six — Francine

  "What do you think of this one?" Francine asked. She unwound a length of shimmering bluish greenish purplish cloth from the bolt and threw it in a long train across the bed. The bed was already covered two or three deep with partly unwound rolls of cloth. "I had a tohu-bohu with the head loomster every day for a week before he got the colors right."

  "Very handsome," Don said. He was sitting on the edge of the only arm chair in Francine's hotel room; for some reason, he couldn't make himself relax. "I never saw anything like it. But—excuse me, Fran—what are they for? Your fabrics are beautiful, but I can't imagine them being used for dresses or curtains or anything like that. They're so—unh—mortuary. Funereal."

  His foster sister burst into delighted laughter. Her small, chic nose was all wrinkled up with merriment. "Don, you always were clever! Funereal! That's exactly it. But"—her face grew sober—"didn't you get my 'grams? Didn't you? I'm almost certain I sent you a 'gram when I got my new job."

  Don licked his lips. He had a vague recollection of 'grams from Francine, 'grams which had come when he'd been drinking a good deal. He didn't have the slightest recollection of what had been in them. Maybe he'd thrown them away without opening them. "I don't believe they were delivered," he said dishonestly. "I was living in the sand all the time then. On the beach."

  Francine frowned. "I'll have to complain to somebody," she observed. "A fine state of affairs, when first-class 'grams aren't delivered. Anyhow, Don, what I told you in them was that I had taken a position doing designing with the Solace and Assurance branch of Emotional Health. I like it. I feel I'm doing something useful, useful to society, now."