Robert Silverberg - The Silent Invaders

He activated the subsonic.

The first waves of inaudible below-the-threshold sound rippled out from the focus on his thigh, ignoring false flesh and striking through to the Medlin core beneath. Protected by the three-foot cone of his shield, Harris nevertheless felt sick to the stomach, rocked by the reverberating sound waves that poured from the pellet embedded in his thigh. Stabbing spasms of nausea shivered through him a dozen times a second.

But he was getting off lightly, compared with the others in the room.

Coburn, his face mottled by shock and anger, was reaching for his weapon, but he never got to it. Nerves refused to carry the messages of the angry brain. His arm drooped slackly. He slumped over, falling heavily to the floor.

Beth fell even more rapidly, dropping within an instant of the first waves.

The other two Medlins fell.

Still the subsonic waves poured forth, as Harris held his hand tightly to the nexus on his hip. To his surprise, Harris saw that the two giants were still remaining on their feet and were semi-conscious, if groggy. They were moving around in vague circles, shuffling and shambling, fighting the subsonic.

It must be because they’re so big , he thought. It takes longer for the subsonic to knock them out. I’ll just have to keep juicing them for a while .

Wrynn was sagging now, swaying from side to side like some wounded behemoth. His wife, reeling under the impact of the noiseless waves, slipped to the floor. A moment later her husband followed her, landing with an enormous booming thud as three hundred pounds of bone and muscle crashed to the floor.

The office was silent. Little puddles of darkness stained the carpet where the falling Medlins had spilled their drink. Six unconscious forms lay sprawled awkwardly on the floor.

Harris pressed his side again, signalling the all clear to the five Darruui waiting in the street a block away.

He found the switch that opened the door and pulled it down. That uncanny mechanism whisked the door out of sight, and Harris peered outward into the hall. Three more Medlins lay outside, unconscious. A fourth was running toward them from the far end of the long hall. He was shouting, “What happened? What’s going on? You people sick or something?”

Harris stared at him and pressed his hip a second time. The Medlin ran into the forty-foot zone and recoiled visibly, but without any awareness of what was happening to him. He staggered forward a few steps and fell, joining his comrades on the thick velvet carpet. Harris let the signal subside.

Ten of them, he thought.

Ten Medlins. Plus two more if the two giant Wrynns turned out not to be Earthers. A decent haul, he thought. A tenth of the Medlin task force blotted out in one simple operation.

He drew the disruptor.

It lay in his palm, small, deadly. The trigger was nothing more than a thin strand of metal. He needed only to flip off the guard, press the trigger back, aim casually in any direction, and watch the Medlins die of broiled brains and jellied synapses.

But his hand was shaking.

He did not fire.

He bit down hard on his lip and gritted his teeth and lifted the weapon, and tried to force himself to use it. But he could not. He raged at himself, scowled and harangued himself. This was no way for a Servant of the Spirit to behave! Those were Medlins down on the floor, beasts in human guise.

Kill them! Kill! Kill !

And he held the disruptor loosely, doing nothing. Sweating, he reached his left hand over, wrenched the guard off the disruptor. His finger curled into place over the trigger. He brought the gun up, pointed it at Beth, aimed it between her breasts. He closed his eyes and tried to strip away the deluding synthetic flesh, tried to carve the Medlin reality out of her, to reveal her as the hideous, pebble-skinned, bony monstrosity that he knew her to be beneath her Earther form. A muscle trembled in his cheek as he fought to pull the trigger and destroy her.

Then a silent voice within his skull whispered, You could not be trusted after all, could you? You were a traitor through and through, a cheat and a liar. But we had to let the test go on at least to this point, for the sake of our consciences .

“Who said that?” Harris gasped, looking wildly around in every corner of the room.

I did.

It felt like feathers brushing his brain. “Where are you?” he demanded, panicky. “I don’t see you. Where are you hiding?”

I am in this room , came the calm reply, and Harris wanted to tear his skull apart to find the source of that quiet voice.

Put down the gun, Harris-Khülom.

Harris hesitated. His hand moved an inch or two toward his bodily distress-signal. But even that gesture was intercepted, intercepted and understood.

No, don’t try to signal your friends. Just let the gun fall.

As though it had been wrenched from his hand, the gun dropped from his fingers. It bounced a few inches on the carpet and lay still.

Now shut off the subsonic , came the quiet command. I find it unpleasant .

Obediently Harris deactivated the instrument. His mind was held in some strange stasis; he had no private volitional control whatever. His body throbbed with frustration. How were they doing this to him? They had made him a prisoner in his own mind.

His lips fumbled to shape words.

“Who are you? Tell me who you are!”

A member of that super-race whose existence you find it so difficult to accept .

Bewildered, Harris looked down at Wrynn and his wife. Both the fallen giants were unconscious, motionless, breathing slowly, regularly.

“Wrynn?” he asked hoarsely. “How can your mind function if you’re unconscious?”

I am not Wrynn , came the reply.

“Not… Wrynn?”

No. Not Wrynn.

“Who are you, then? Where are you? Stop driving me crazy! I’ve got to know!”

I am not Wrynn , came the calm voice, but Wrynn’s unborn child .

Gently Harris felt himself falling toward the floor. It was exactly as though an intangible, invisible hand had yanked his legs out from under him, then had caught him and eased his fall.

He lay quiescent, eyes open, neither moving nor wanting to move. He lacked even the power to sound his distress-signal. In some strange way the desire to call for help had been taken from him. Only in the depths of his mind did he boil with fear and frustration.

As the minutes passed, the victims of the subsonic slowly returned to consciousness.

Beth woke first. She sat up, stirred, put her hands to her eyes. She turned to the unconscious form of Wrynn’s wife, and now Harris saw the gentle rounding of the giantess’ belly.

Beth said to the unconscious giantess, “You went to quite an extreme to prove a point!”

You were in no danger , came the answer.

The others were awakening now, one by one, sitting up, rubbing their foreheads. Harris, motionless, watched them. His head throbbed too, as though he had been stunned by the subsonic device himself.

“Suppose you had been knocked out by the subsonic too?” Beth asked, still addressing herself to the life within the giant woman. “He would have killed us. That’s what he came here for.”

The subsonic could not affect me. I am beyond the reach of its powers.

Harris found his voice again. “That… that embryo can think and act?” His voice was a harsh, ragged whisper.

Beth nodded. “The next generation. It reaches sentience while still in the womb. By the time it’s born it’s fully aware, and able to defend itself while its body catches up with the abilities of its mind.”