[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

that it was just this message that the other man had come personally to give him. It was clear, if
unspoken, between them. Yet Miles felt a strange, angry need to bring the understanding out in the open.
A need to make it plain the thing was there, like touching with his tongue, again and again, the exposed
root of an aching tooth.
"You mean, if it turns out that they want to make me into something dangerous to people back here," he
said, "you want me to do something about it, is that it?'
The President did not answer. He continued to look at Miles and hold Miles' shoulder as if he were
pledging him to some special duty.
"You mean," said Miles again, more loudly, "that if it turns out that I'm being made into something
dangerous to . . . the human race, I'm to destroy myself. Is that it?"
The President sighed, and his hand dropped from Miles' shoulder. He turned to look out at the grass in
the courtyard.
"You're to follow your own judgment," he said to Miles.
A great loneliness descended upon Miles. A chilling loneliness. He had never felt so alone before. It
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
seemed as if the President's words had lifted him up and transported him off, far off, from all humanity
into an isolated watchtower, to a solitary sentry post far removed from all the rest of humanity. He too
turned and looked out at the little strip of grass. Suddenly it looked greener and more beautiful than any
such length of lawn he had ever gazed upon in his life. It seemed infinitely precious.
"Miles," he heard the older man say.
He lifted his head and turned to see the President facing him once more, with his hand outstretched.
"Good luck, Miles," said the President.
"Thank you." Miles took the hand automatically. They shook hands, and the Chief Executive turned and
walked away across the room and out the door, leaving it open. The two Treasury agents who had
picked up Miles originally came back in, shutting the door firmly behind them. They sat down again
without a word near the TV set and turned it on. Miles heard its low murmur again in his ear.
Almost blindly, he himself turned and walked into one of the two bedrooms of the suite, closing the door
behind him. He lay down on the bed on his back, staring at the white ceiling.
He woke suddenly and only by his waking was he made aware of the fact that his drifting thoughts had
dwindled into sleep. Standing over him, alongside the bed, were two figures that were vaguely familiar,
although he could not remember ever having seen them before in his life. Slowly he remembered. They
were the two figures, still business-suited, that had been shown on the television screen as he and Marie
had watched the President's broadcast in the bar. Suddenly he understood. These were the two aliens
from the monster ship that overhung Earth, under a sun that they had colored red to attract the attention
of all the people on the world to the coming of that ship.
Reflex, the reflex that brings an animal out of sound sleep to its feet, brought Miles to his. He found
himself standing almost between the two aliens. At close range their faces looked directly into his, no less
human of feature or color or general appearance than they had looked before. But this close, it seemed
to Miles that he felt an emanation from them something too still, too composed to be human. And yet
the eyes they fixed upon him were not unkind.
Only remote, as remote as the eyes of men on some high plateau looking down into a jungle of beasts.
"Miles," said the one on his left, who was slightly the shorter of the two. His voice was a steady
baritone calm, passionless, distant, without foreign accent. "Are you ready to come with us?"
Still fogged by sleep, still with his nerves wound wire-tight by the animal reflex that had jerked him up
out of slumber, Miles snapped out what he might not have said without thinking, otherwise.
"Do I have a choice?"
The two looked steadily at him.
"Of course you have a choice," said the shorter of the two calmly. "You'd be no good, to your world or
to us, unless you wanted to help us."
Miles began to laugh. It was harsh, reflexive laughter that burst from him almost without intention. It took
him a few seconds to get it under control, but finally, he did.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"Want to?" he said his real feelings bursting out in spite of himself. "Of course I don't want to.
Yesterday I had my own life, with its future all planned out. Now the sun turns red, and it seems I have to
go to some impossible place and do some impossible thing instead of what I've been planning and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]