Destiny Doll (4 page)

"That's all very interesting," I said. "Could you bring yourself to tell me where we might be going?"

She said, "We don't know where we're going."

And that was damn foolishness, of course. You don't set out on a flight until you know where you are going. If she didn't want to tell, why couldn't she just say so?

"Mr. Smith," said Sara, "knows where we are going."

I switched my head to look at him, that great lump huddled in his chair, the sightless, milk-white eyes in his flabby face.

"I have a voice in my head," he said. "I have contact with someone. I have a friend out there."

Oh, wonderful! I thought. It all comes down to this. He has a voice in his head.

"Let me guess," I said to Sara Foster. "This religious gentleman brought Mr. Smith to you."

She suddenly was angry. Her face turned white and her blue eyes seemed to narrow to gleaming jets of ice.

"You are right," she said, biting off the words, "but that's not all of it. You know, of course, that Knight was accompanied by a robot."

I nodded. "A robot by the name of Roscoe."

"And that Roscoe was a telepathic robot?"

"There's no such thing," I said.

"But there is. Or was. I've done my homework, captain. I have the specifications for this particular robot. And I had them long before Mr. Smith showed up. Also letters that Knight had written to certain friends of his. I have, perhaps, the only authentic documentation concerning Knight and what be was looking for. All of it acquired before these two gentlemen showed up and obtained from sources of which they could have had no knowledge."

"But they could have heard . . ."

"I didn't tell a soul," she said. "It was—what would you call it? Perhaps no more than a hobby. Maybe an obsession. Bits and pieces picked up here and there, with never any hope of fitting them together. It was such a fascinating legend . . ."

"And that is all it is," I said. "A legend. Built up through the years by accomplished, but nonmalicious, liars. One tiny fact is taken and twisted and interwoven with other tiny facts until all these interwoven tiny facts, forced into fictitious relationships with one another, become so complicated that there is not a shred of hope of knowing which is solid fact and which is inspired fiction."

"But letters? And specifications for a special kind of robot?"

"That would be something else again. If they were authentic."

"There is no question about their authenticity. I've made sure of that."

"And what do these letters say?"

"That he was looking for something."

"I've told you they all were looking for something. Every one of them. Some of them believed the things they were looking for are there. Some of them simply hypnotized themselves into believing it. That's the way it was in the old days, that's the way it is right now. These kind of people need some excuse for their eternal wandering. They need to graft some purpose to a purposeless existence. They're in love with space and all those new unknown worlds which lie out beyond the next horizon. There is no reason in the world why they should be batting around out there and they know this, so they concoct their reasons and . . ."

"Captain, you don't believe a word of it?"

"Not a word," I said.

It was all right with me if she let these two adventurers lead her on a wild-goose chase, but I was not about to be a party to it. Although, remembering that ship standing out there on the landing field, I admit that I was tempted. But it was impossible, I knew. Earth was sanctuary and needed sanctuary.

"You do not like me," Friar Tuck paid to me. "And I don't like you, either. But let me tell you, honestly, that I brought my blind companion to Miss Foster with no thought of monetary gain. I am past all need of monetary gain. All I seek is truth."

I didn't answer him. Of what use would be an answer? I'd 'known his breed before.

"I cannot see," said Smith, speaking not to us, not even to himself, but to some unknown person that no one knew about. "I have never seen. I know no shape except the shapes that my hands can tell me. I can envision objects in my imagination, but the vision must be wrong, for I do not know of colors, although I am told there is such a thing as color. Red means something to you, but it is meaningless to me. There is no way one can describe a color to a man who cannot see. The feel of texture, yes, but no way in the world to really know of texture. Water to drink, but what does water look like? Whiskey in a glass with ice, but what does whiskey look like? Ice is hard and smooth and has a feel I'm told is cold. It is water that has turned to crystals and I understand it's white, but what is crystal, what is white?

"I have nothing of this world except the space it gives me and the thoughts of other people, but how am I to know that my interpretations of these thoughts are right? Or that, I can marshal facts correctly? I have little of this world, but I have another world." He lifted his hand and with his fingers tapped his skull. "Another world," he said, "here inside my head. Not an imagined world, but another world that's given me by another being. I do not know where this other being is,  although I've been made to know he is very distant from us. That is all I know for certain—the great distance that he lies and the direction of that distance."

"So that is it," I said, looking at Sara. "He's to be the compass. We set out in the direction that he tells us and we keep on going . . ."

'That is it," she said. "That was the way it was with Roscoe."

"Knight's robot?"

"Knight's robot. That's what the letters say. Knight had it himself—just a little of it. Just enough to know there was someone out there. So he had the robot fabricated."

"A made-to-order robot? A telepathic robot?" She nodded. 

It was hard to swallow. It was impossible. There was something going on here beyond all belief.

"There is truth out there," said Tuck. "A truth we cannot even guess. I'm willing to bet my life to go out and see."

"And that," I said, "is exactly what you would be doing. Even if you found the truth . . ."

"If it's out there," Sara said, "someone, some time, will find it. Why can't it be us?"

I looked around the room. The heads glared down at us, fantastic and ferocious creatures from many distant planets, and some of them I'd seen before and others I had only heard about and there were a number of them that I'd never heard about, not even in the alcoholic tales told by lonely, space-worn men when they gathered with their fellows in obscure bars on planets of which perhaps not more than a thousand people knew the names.

The walls are full, I thought. There is no more room for other heads. And the glamor of hunting and of bringing home more heads may be fading, too. Perhaps not alone for Sara Foster, big game huntress, but for those other people in whose eyes. her adventures on distant planets spelled out a certain kind of status. So what more logical than to hunt another kind of game, to bring home another kind of head, to embark upon a new and more marvelous adventure?

"No one," said Sara Foster, "would ever know you'd gone into space, that you had left the Earth. You'd come here someday and a man would leave again. He'd look exactly like you, but he would not be you. He'd live here on Earth in your stead and you'd go into space."

"You have money enough to buy a deal like this?" I asked. "To buy the loyalty of such a man?"

She shrugged. "I have money enough to buy anything at all. And once we were well out in space what difference would it make if he were unmasked?"

"None at all," I said, "except I'd like to come back with the ship—if the ship comes back."

"That could be arranged," she said. "That could be taken care of."

"The man who would be me here on Earth," I asked, "might meet with a fatal accident?"

"Not that," she said. "We could never get away with that. There are too many ways to identify a man."

I got the impression she was just a little sorry so simple a solution was not possible.

I shied away from it, from the entire deal. I didn't like the people and I didn't like the project. But there was the itch to get my hands upon that ship and be out in space again. A man could die on Earth, I thought; he could suffocate. I'd seen but little of the Earth and the little I had seen I'd liked. But it was the kind of thing a man might like for a little time and then slowly grow to hate. Space was in my blood. I got restless when I was out of it too long. There was something out there that got beneath one's skin, became a part of one. The star-strewn loneliness, the silence, the sense of being anchored nowhere, of being free to go wherever one might wish and to leave whenever one might wish—this was all a part of it, but not all of it. There was something else that no man had ever found a way to put a name to. Perhaps a sense of truth, corny as it sounded.

"Think of price," said Sara Foster, "then double it. There'll be no quibbling."

"But why?" I asked. "Does money have no meaning for you?"

"Of course it has," she said, "but having it also has taught me that you must pay for what you get. And we need you, Captain Ross. You've never traveled the safe spaceways, all marked out and posted. You've been out there ahead of all the others, hunting for your planets. We can use a man like you."

A robot stepped through the doorway. "Dinner is ready to be served, Miss Foster."

She looked at me, challenging me.

"I'll think on it," I promised.

THREE

And I should have thought on it much longer, I told myself as I stood on that moon-washed desert; I never should have gone.

Smith still was crawling around on his hands and knees and whimpering. His blind-white eyes, catching the moonlight, glinted like the eyes of a hunting cat. Tuck was getting his legs unwound from the ridiculous robe he wore, stumbling toward the moaning Smith. What was it, I wondered, that made the two of them such pals? Not homosexuality, for that would have been apparent in the close confines of the space trip out from Earth; there must be within them some sort o spiritual need that reached out and touched the other. Certainly Smith would be glad of someone to look after him and Tuck might well regard the blind man and his voice in the head as a good sort of investment, but their friendship must be something more than that. Two fumbling incompetents, perhaps, who had found in each other's weaknesses a common bond of compassion and of understanding.

The desert was almost as bright as day and, looking at the sky, I saw it was not the moon alone that accounted for the brightness. The entire vault of sky was ablaze with stars, more stars and bigger stars and brighter than I had ever seen before. The stars had not been apparent in the quick glance we had gotten of this place before the hobbies bucked us into it, but now they were—stars that seemed so close it seemed a man could reach up his hand and pick them, like the apples off a tree.

Sara was on her feet by now, still grasping her rifle, carrying it at port arms across her body.

"I managed to keep the muzzle up," she told me.

"Well, hurrah for you," I said.

"That's the first rule, always," she told me. "Keep the muzzle up so it doesn't clog. If I hadn't, the barrel would be full of sand."

George still was wailing and now his wailing took the form of words "What happened, Tuck?" he screamed "Where are we? What happened to my friend? He has gone away. I don't hear him anymore."

"For the love of Christ," I said to Tuck, disgusted, "get him on his feet and dust him off and wipe his nose and tell him what has happened."

"I can't explain," growled Tuck, "until someone tells me what is going on."

"I can tell you that," I said. "We got took. We've been had, my friend."

"They'll come back," howled George. "They'll come back or us. They won't leave us here."

"No, of course they won't," said Tuck, hauling him to his feet. "They'll come back when the sun is up."

"The sun ain't up now, Tuck?"

"No," said Tuck. "The moon. And a—lot of stars."

And I was stuck with this, I thought. Heaved into a place where I had no idea where I was and loaded down with a couple of nincompoops and a white Diana who could only think about how she had kept he muzzle up.

I took a look around. We had been dumped on the lower slope of a dune and on either side of us the dunes heaved up to meet the night-time sky. The sky itself was empty of everything but the moon and stars. There was not a cloud in sight. And the land was empty of anything but sand. There were no trees or bushes, not a blade of vegetation. There was a slight chill in the air, but that, I figured, would be dissipated as soon as the sun came up. More than likely we had a long, hot day ahead and we hadn't any water.

Long furrows in the sand showed where our bodies had plowed through it, pushing up little mounds of sand ahead of us. We had been thrown from the direction of the other dune, and knowing exactly from where we had been thrown, it occurred to me, might have some importance. I walked out a ways and with the butt of my gun drew a long line in the sand and made some rough arrows pointing from it.

Sara watched me closely. "You think we can get back?" she asked.

"I wouldn't bet on it," I told her, shortly.

"There was a doorway of some sort," she said, "and the hobbies bucked us through it and when we landed here there wasn't any doorway."

"They had us pegged," I said, "from the minute we set down. They gave us the business, from the very start. We never had a prayer."

"But we are here," she said, "and we have to start to think how we can get out."

"If you can keep an eye on those two clowns," I said, "and see they cause no trouble, I'll go out for a look."

She regarded me gravely. "Have you anything in mind, captain? Anything in particular?"

I shook my head. "Just a look around. There could be a chance I might stumble on some water. We'll need water badly before the day is over."

"But if you lost your way . . ."

"I'll have my tracks to follow," I told her, "if a wind doesn't come up suddenly and wipe them out. If anything goes wrong, I'll fire a beam up into the sky and you loose off a shot or two to guide me back."

"You don't think the hobbies will come back to get us?"

"Do you think so?"

"I suppose not," she said. "But what's the point of it? What did they gain by it? Our luggage couldn't be worth that much to them."

"They got rid of us," I said.

"But they guided us in. If it hadn't been for that beam . . ."

"There was the ship," I said. "It could have been the ship that they were after. They had a lot of ships out on the field. They must have lured a lot of other people."

"And all of them on this planet? Or on other planets?"

"Could be," I said. "Our job right now is to see if there's any place better than this desert we can go.. We haven't any food and we have no water."

I settled the strap of my rifle on my shoulder and started to plod up the dune.

"Anything else I can do?' asked Sara.

"You might keep those two from tracking up that line I made. If a wind comes up and starts to blot it out, try to mark it somehow."

"You have a lot of faith in that line."

"Just that it's a good idea to know where we are."

 "It mightn't mean a thing," she said. "We must have been thrown through some sort of space-time null-point and where we wound up wouldn't mean . . ."

"I agree," I said, "but it's all we have to go on."

I plodded up the dune and it was heavy going. My feet sank deep into the sand and I kept sliding back I could make no time. And it was hard work. Just short of its crest I stopped to rest a moment and looked back down the slope.

 The three of them stood there, looking up at me. And for some reason I couldn't explain, I found myself loving them—all three of them, that creepy, soft fool of a Smith and that phony Tuck, and Sara, bless her, with her falling lock of hair and that ridiculous oldtime rifle. No matter what they were, they were human beings and somehow or other I'd have to get them out of here. For they were counting on me. To them I was the guy who had barnstormed space and rode out all sorts of trouble. I was the rough, tough character who technically headed up the expedition. I was the captain and when the chips were down it was the captain who was expected to come through. The poor, damn, trusting fools, I thought—I didn't have the least idea of what was going on and I had no plans and was as puzzled and beaten and hopeless as any one of them. But I couldn't let them know it. I had to keep on acting as if at any moment I'd come up with a trick that would get us all home free.

I lifted a hand and waved to them and I tried to keep it jaunty, but I failed. Then I clambered up the dune and over the top of it and the desert stretched before me. In every direction that I looked, it was all the same—waves of dunes as far as I could see, each dune like the other and no break at all—no trees that might hint water, absolutely nothing but a sweep of sand.

I went plunging down the dune and climbed another and from its crest the desert looked the same as ever. I could go on; I admitted to myself, climbing dunes forever and there might never be a difference. The whole damn planet might be desert, without a single break. The hobbies, when, they'd bucked us through the gate or door or whatever it might be, had known what they were doing, and if they wanted to get rid of us, they could not have done a more efficient job of it. For they, or the world of which they were a part, hadn't missed a lick. We had been tolled in by the beam and hustled off the ship and the ship been sealed and then, without the time to think, with no chance to protest, we had been heaved into this world. A bum's rush, I thought, all worked out beforehand.

I climbed another dune. There always was the chance, I kept on telling myself, that in one of those little valleys which lay between the dunes there might be something worth the finding. Water, perhaps, for water would be the thing that we would need the most. Or a path that might lead us to better country or to natives who might be able to give us some sort of help, although why anyone would want to live in a place like this was more than I could figure.

Actually, of course, I expected nothing. There was nothing in this sweep of desert upon which a man could build much hope. But when I neared the top of the dune—near enough so that I could see over the top of it—I spotted something on the crest of the dune beyond.

A birdcage sort of contraption was half buried in the crest, with its metallic ribs shimmering in the moon and starlight, like the ribcage of some great prehistoric beast that had been trapped atop the dune, bawling out its fright until death had finally quieted it.

I slipped the rifle off my shoulder and held it ready. The sliding sand carried me slowly down the dune, whispering as it slid. When I had slid so far that I could no longer see over the crest of the dune, I set off at an angle to the left and began to climb again, crouching to keep my head down. Twenty feet from the top I got down and crawled flat against the sand. When my eyes came over the crest and I could see the birdcage once again, I froze, digging in my toes to keep from sliding back.

Below the cage, I saw, was a scar of disturbed sand and even as I watched, new blobs of sand broke loose beneath the, cage and went trickling down the slope. It had not been long ago, I was sure, that the cage had impacted on the dune crest—the sand disturbed by its landing had not as yet reached a state of equilibrium and the scar was fresh.

Impacted seemed a strange word, and yet reason told me that it must have impacted, for it was most unlikely that anyone had placed it there. A ship of some sort, perhaps, although a strange sort of ship, not enclosed, but fashioned only of a frame. And if, as I thought, it were indeed a ship, it must have carried life and the life it carried was either dead within it or somewhere nearby.

I glanced slowly up and down the length of the dune and there, far to the right of where the birdcage lay, was a faint furrow, a sort of toboggan slide, plunging from the crest downward into the shadow that lay between the dunes. I strained to penetrate the shadows, but could make out nothing. I'd have to get closer to that toboggan slide.

I backed off down the dune and went spidering across it, angling to the right this time. I moved as cautiously as I could to keep down the sound of the sliding sand that broke free and went hissing down the dune face as I moved. There might be something over on the other side of that dune, listening for any sign of life.

When I thrust the upper part of my head over the dune crest, I still was short of the toboggan slide, but much closer to it and from the hollow between the dunes came a sliding, scraping sound. Straining my ears, it seemed to me that I caught some motion in the trough, but could not be sure. The Sound of sliding and of scraping stopped and then began again and once more there was a hint of movement. I slid my rifle forward so that in an instant I could aim it down into the trough.

I waited.

The slithering sound stopped, then started once again and something moved down there (I was sure of it this time) and something moaned. All sound came to an end.

 There was no use of waiting any longer.

 "Hello down there!" I called.

 There was no answer.

"Hello," I called again.

It could be, I realized, that I was dealing with something so far removed from my own sector of the galaxy that the space patois familiar to that sector was not used by it and that we would have no communications bridge.

And then a quavering, hooting voice answered. At first it was just a noise, then, as I wrestled with the noise, I knew it to be a word, a single hooted question.

"Friend?" had been the word, "Friend," I answered.

"In need am I of friend," the hooting voice said. "Please to advance in safety. I do not carry weapon."

 "I do," I said, a little grimly.

"Of it, there is no need," said the thing down in the shadows. "I am trapped and helpless."

"That is your ship up there?"

"Ship?"

"Your conveyance."

"Truly so, dear friend. It have come apart. It is inoperative."

"I'm coming down," I told it. "I'll have my weapon on you. One move out of you . . ."

"Come then," the hooter croaked. "No move out of me. I shall lie supine."

I came to my feet and went across the top of that dune as quickly as I could and plunging down the other slope, crouched to present as small a target as was possible. I kept the rifle trained on that shadowed area from which the voice came.

I slid into the trough and crouched there, bending low to sight up its length. Then I saw it, a hump of blackness lying very still.

"All right," I called. "Move toward me now."

The hump heaved and wallowed, then lay still again, "Move," it said, "I cannot."

"OK, then. Lie still. Do not move at all."

I ran forward and stopped. The hump lay still. It did not even twitch.

I moved closer, watching it intently. Now I could see it better. From the front of its head a nest of tentacles sprouted, now lying limply on the ground. From its rather massive head, if the tentacle-bearing portion of it actually was its head, its body tapered back, four feet or so, and ended in a bluntness. It seemed to have no feet or arms. With those tentacles, perhaps, it had no need of arms. It wore no clothing, upon its body was no sign of any sort of harness. The tentacles grasped no tool or weapon.

"What is your trouble?" I asked. "What can I do for you?"