The Unteleported Man

She turned pages and saw that it was so. Will this tell me, she wondered, what's happened to Rachmael? Finding the page reference, she at once turned to it. Her hands shook as she read the startling passage.

"What way?" Rachmael demanded, lifting his eyes from the page and confronting the creature before him. "You mean become like you?" His body cringed; he retreated physically from even the notion of it, let alone its presence here before him.

"Good lord," Freya said. And read intently on.

"All flesh must die." the eye-eater said, and giggled.

Aloud, Freya said, " 'The eye-eater.' " Chilled, she said to the two

See Note on page V

"Let me go," she choked; her fingers, torn from the trigger, dug into their clutching hands. I couldn't do it, she realized; I couldn't activate the darn mechanism. Weariness filled her as she felt their hands rip loose the destruct mechanism, tear it apart, then drop it into the waste slot of the flapple.

"It would have destroyed all of us," the taller agent gasped as he and his companion confronted her ac­cusingly, with indignation mixed with apprehension; she had genuinely frightened them by her near-suicide. As far as they knew, it had been close, very close. But actually she could not have done it at all.

The man's companion muttered, "We better consult the book. See what it says; assuming of course it says anything." Together the two of them pored over the book, ignoring her; Freya, with trembling fingers, lit a cigarette, stared sightlessly through the window at the ground below.

Trees... houses. Exactly as the TV screen had promised. Jolted, she thought, Where's the garrison state? Where's the war I saw? The battle I was a part of, only a little while ago?

It made no sense.

"We were fighting," she said at last.

Startled, the THL agents glanced at her, then at one another. "She must have gotten into one of the paraworlds," one said presently to his companion; they both nodded in attentive agreement. "Silver? White? I forget which Lupov calls it. Not The Clock, though."

"And not Blue," the other agent murmured. Again the two of them returned to the large hardbound book; again they ignored her.

Strange, Freya thought. It made no sense. And yet the two THL agents appeared to understand. Will I ever know? she asked herself. And if so, will it be in time?

Several worlds, she realized. And each of them dif­ferent. And — if they're looking in that book, not to see what has happened but to see what will happen... then it must have something to do with time.

Time-travel. The UN's time-warpage weapon.

Evidently Sepp von Einem had gotten hold of it. The senile old genius and his disturbed proleptic protégé Gloch had altered it, god only knew how. But effec­tively; that much was obvious.

The flapple began to descend.

Glancing, she saw below them a large ship moored by its tail, in flight position, poised to ascend at any moment; in fact, wisps of fuel-vapor trickled from its rear. A big one, she decided; it belonged to someone of importance. Possibly President Omar Jones. Or —

Or worse.

She had a good idea that it was not Omar Jones' ship — even if such a person existed. Undoubtedly the ship belonged to Theo Ferry. And, as she watched the ship grow, a bizarre idea occurred to her. What if the Omphalos had been beaten, years ago, in its flight from the Sol system to Fomalhaut? This ship, huge and menacing, with its pitted gray hull... certainly it did have the sullied, darkened appearance of a much-utilized vessel; had it, at some earlier time, crossed deep space between the two star systems?

The ultimate irony. Theo Ferry had made the journey before Rachmael ben Applebaum. Or rather possibly had; she could of course not be sure. But she felt in­tuitively that Ferry had, all this time, been capable of doing it. So whatever could be learned had long ago — perhaps decades ago — been learned... and by the very man whom they had, at all costs, to defeat.

"Better brush your hair," the taller of the two THL agents a

Almost unable to speak, Freya said, "This isn't my room!"

"Bedroom?" Both THL agents laughed in unison, and this time there was no mistaking it; the tone was one of rancid, enormous licentiousness. And, clearly, this appeared to the two men an old story; they both knew precisely what would be happening — not to them but for them to witness; she was overtly conscious of the mood already in progress. They knew what would soon be expected of them... and of her. And yet it did not seem to her so much concerned with Theo Ferry as it did with the environment here as a whole; she sensed an un­derlying wrongness, and sensed further that in some way which she did not comprehend, Ferry was as much a victim of it as she.

Paraworlds, she thought to herself. They, the two THL agents, had said that. Silver, White, The Clock... and finally Blue.

Am I in a paraworld now? she wondered. Whatever they are. Perhaps that would explain the twisted, strained wrongness which the world around her now seemed to possess throughout. She shivered. Which one is this? she asked herself, assuming it's any of them? But even if it is, she realized, that still doesn't tell me what they are, or how I got into this one, or — how I manage to scramble back. Again she shivered.

"We'll be touching ships with Mr. Ferry at 003.5," the taller of the two THL agents informed her con­ventionally; he seemed amused, now, as if her discom­fort were quaint and charming. "So be prepared," he added. "Last chance to — "

"May I see that book again?" she blurted. "The one you have there; the book about me and Rachmael."

The taller of the two agents passed her the volume; at once she turned to the index and sought out her own name. Two citations in the first part of the book; three later on. She selected the next to last one, on page two-ninety-eight; a moment later she had begun rapidly to read.

No doubt could exist in her mind, now; it had been abundantly demonstrated. With renewed courage Freya faced Theodoric Ferry, the most powerful man in either the Sol or the Fomalhaut system and perhaps even beyond, and said,

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ferry." Her voice, in her own ears, was cool, as calm as she might have hoped for. "I failed to realize what you are. You'll have to excuse my hysteria on that basis." With a slight — but u

"Yes, Miss Holm?" Ferry's tone was dark, mocking. "Exactly what do you realize about me, now? Say it." He chuckled.

Freya said, "You're an aquatic cephalopod, a Mazdast. And you've always been. A long time ago, when Telpor first linked the Sol system with the Fomalhaut system, when the first Terran field-team crossed over and returned — "

"That's correct," Theodoric Ferry agreed, and once more chuckled... although now his — or rather its — tone consisted of a wet, wailing hiss. "I infiltrated your race decades ago. I've been in your midst

"Better get the book back from her again," the smaller of the two THL agents said warningly to his companion. "I still think she's reading too damn much." He then, without further consultation, snatched the book back from her numbed hands, this time put it away in a locked briefcase which, after an in­decisive pause he then laboriously chained to his wrist — just in case.