Robert Silverberg - The Silent Invaders

Harris rose from his seat. Stony-faced, he walked out of the theater, into the night.

It was past midnight now. The streets were fairly quiet. He made his way carefully up the street to the helitaxi ramp.

“Spaceways Hotel,” he said.

He settled back for the long trip. When he left the ramp at his destination and crossed into the hotel, he looked about warily in all directions.

The communicator signal in his body had not rasped once since he had left Carver in the alleyway. That was suspicious. Why hadn’t Carver tried to contact him for an explanation, Harris wondered? Did he simply plan to close in and eliminate him without a word?

Harris sealed his room door. No one would enter without his knowledge now.

He took down his bottle of Darruui wine. It was nearly half empty, now. He had been too liberal with it the night before. Hand shaking a little, he measured out a small quantity, and sipped it as though it were the elixir of life itself.

His communicator rasped.

Tensely, he activated it. It was Carver.

“Where did you go?” Carver demanded hotly. “What happened?”

“I was frightened.”

“Frightened? Is that a word for a Servant of the Spirit to use? Tell me what happened?”

“You passed out,” Harris improvised. “The robot carried you to the alleyway. I thought you had been poisoned or something, that the Medlins were closing in. So I thought the best thing was for me to escape.”

“And leave me there?”

“It would have done Darruu no good for both of us to be captured or killed,” Harris pointed out. He was relaxing rapidly, now. Carver did not seem to suspect the real cause of his fainting spell. Unless, of course, he was simply playing a little game.

“Where are you now?” Carver asked.

“At my hotel room.”

“Come to headquarters immediately.”

“At this hour?” Harris asked.

“Come to headquarters and stop grumbling,” Carver said. “Your behavior has been very strange, Major Harris. Very strange indeed.”

“I’ve killed five Medlins tonight,” Harris said. “Can’t I have some rest?”

“We’ll expect you within the hour,” Carver said, and broke the contact.

Harris rested his head in his hands. He felt groggy. He had done too much in the past few days, covered too much ground. He simply wanted to rest… to rest…

But there was no rest for him. Warily, he dragged himself to his feet. The thought of travelling far across the city to that weatherbeaten ancient building filled him with foreboding. There was the nagging feeling that he was going to his death, that he would perish in a dry, dusty room of some rotting building in a decayed part of the city.

He rode downstairs, shambled out of the gravshaft like a walking corpse. It seemed to him that he had spent this entire week climbing in and out of helitaxis, jaunting off to one end of the city or another. Feeling frayed and edgy, he signalled to the concierge to get him a helitaxi.

A figure came up out of nowhere and whispered softly, “You didn’t succeed, did you?”

He whirled, half expecting an assassin’s blow.

“Beth!”

She smiled. She had changed her clothes again, into her more seductive garb, and she was the incredibly lovely creature he had seen on his first day on Earth. He looked at her now, and his eyes met hers, and he ran through some of her memories.

Redness came to his cheeks. He was in possession of her personality, he knew the most intimate secrets of her soul. He could not bear to look her in the eye.

“The gun was in your hand,” she said. “What happened then?”

“I lost my nerve. I wasn’t ready.”

“Perhaps we rushed you too fast.”

“Perhaps.”

A bellhop came up to him. “Helitaxi’s waiting for you at the ramp, Major.”

Harris nodded and gave the boy a coin. Beth said, “Where are you going now?”

“Out to see Carver. He’s sent for me.”

“Where?”

“Darruui headquarters. Way out in the slums.”

“You’re armed?”

“Of course.”

“They’re going to try to kill you, Abner. They’ve come to suspect your loyalty. But first they have to get you by surprise. The subsonic in your hip protects you against an attack. No one can get closer than forty feet to you against your will. So they’re going to ambush you. I thought you’d like to know.”

He nodded. “I figured as much.”

“One more thing,” she said. “An important thing.”

“Yes?”

“We’ve intercepted a message. A dozen more Darruui agents are on their way to Earth. They’ll be arriving in staggered waves over the next two months.”

“So?”

“Our task becomes harder. We’ve got to catch them as they arrive—to root them out. We mustn’t let them take hold here. We can make a beginning tonight, though. If you will help us.”

“I’ll try,” he said.

She took his hand, held it for a moment, squeezed it. He gripped it tightly in return. It was no longer revolting for him to think that beneath the soft pink skin lay the pebbled rugosity of a Medlin pelt. He had seen through to the essential core of her, and he could no longer hate her.

“Be careful,” she murmured. “We’re counting on you. When it’s all over, come to our headquarters. We’ll be waiting for you there.”

“Beth…”

But it was too late. She had slipped away, as quickly as she had come. He felt a sudden fierce throbbing beneath his breastbone. The Medlins had not given up on him, he thought. They were not disgusted by his act of cowardice, by his failure to kill Carver when he had had the chance. They understood—Beth understood, at least—that such conversions as his did not happen in a moment, that he had to grope and feel his way toward the light in a twisting, zigzag course.

He stepped outside, and into the helitaxi. He gave the driver the address.

He sat back, and waited as the cab soared through the night.

At this hour, the neighborhood was even more deserted than ever. No one, no one at all was in sight. Harris approached the shabby building circuitously, watching constantly for an ambush. His heart raced. It was not normal to fear his own people; he was not accustomed to the idea of coming to grief at the hands of Servants of the Spirit, he thought.

There was a cluttering sound in an alleyway, Harris, startled, clapped his hand to his hip, started to press down on the subsonic’s activator. A small furry creature slithered out of the alleyway and glowered up at him, and made a tiny miauling sound.

Harris smiled in relief. That was a close one for you, friend cat. Another moment and you’d have been extinguished .

He knelt for a moment, scratched the animal’s mangy fur, then kept going. The sound of his own footfalls echoed weirdly through the empty streets. Earth’s moon, high overhead, glimmered brightly, its pockmarked face bizarre and subtly disgusting. Harris moved on.

Now he was only a block from the Aragon Boulevard headquarters. Still no ambush. He took one step at a time, kept his hand close to his hip, and advanced across the wide street, then into the building.

Upstairs.

The gravshaft creaked out its protest as it lifted his mass a hundred feet in ten seconds.

Tension mounted in his brain, his respiratory system, his belly. He could feel pores closing, feel sweat rolling down his synthetic skin. Pain drilled into him back of his eyeballs.

The gravshaft halted. He stepped out, ready to slam the subsonic into activation the moment anything menacing appeared. But the hall was empty. It was dark, too, but his Darruui eyes, accustomed to sight on a world where direct sunlight was a rarity, cut easily through the darkness as he headed toward the rooms occupied by the Darruui conspirators.