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There came the begi
He looked at the time-strip on his wrist and jumped a little. Far more time had passed than he had realized. His three hours were nearly up. “I must go back now,” he said.
He opened his lunch hamper and removed the small thermos of water, drank from it thirstily, and emptied it. He placed the empty thermos under one arm. He removed the wrappings of the sandwich and stuffed it in his pocket.
The Other Sam wavered and turned smoky. The smoke thi
Sam closed the hamper, swung its strap over his shoulder again and turned toward the Dome.
His heart was hammering. Would he have the courage to go through with his plan? And if he did, would it work?
When Sam entered the Dome, the Corridor-Master was waiting for him and said, as he looked ostentatiously at his own timestrip, “You shaved it rather fine, didn’t you?”
Sam’s lips tightened and he tried not to sound insolent. “I had three hours, sir.” “And you took two hours and fifty-eight minutes.”
“That’s less than three hours, sir.”
“Hmm.” The Corridor-Master was cold and unfriendly. “Dr. Gentry would like to see you.” “Yes, sir. What for?”
“He didn’t tell me. But I don’t like you cutting it that fine your first time out, Chase. And I don’t like your attitude either, and I don’t like an officer of the Dome wanting to see you. I’m just going to tell you once, Chase-if you’re a troublemaker, I won’t want you in this Corridor. Do you understand?” “Yes, sir. But what trouble have I made?”
“We’ll find that out soon enough.”
Sam had not seen Donald Gentry since their one and only meeting the day the young apprentice had reached the Dome. Gentry still seemed good natured and kindly, and there was nothing in his voice to indicate anything else. He sat in a chair behind his desk, and Sam stood before it, his hamper still bumping his shoulder blade.
Gentry said, “How are you getting along, Sam? Having an interesting time?”
“Yes, sir,” said Sam.
“Still feeling you’d rather be doing something else, working somewhere else?” Sam said, earnestly, “No, sir. This is a good place for me.”
“Because you’re interested in hallucinations?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve been asking others about it, haven’t you?”
“It’s an interesting subject to me, sir.”
“Because you want to study the human brain?”
“Any brain, sir.”
“And you’ve been wandering about outside the Dome, haven’t you?”
“I was told it was permitted, sir.”
“It is. But few apprentices take advantage of that so soon. Did you see anything interesting?”
Sam hesitated, then said, “Yes, sir.”
“A hallucination?”
“No, sir.” He said it quite positively.
Gentry stared at him for a few moments, and there was a kind of speculative hardening of this eyes. “Would you care to tell me what you did see? Honestly.”
Sam hesitated again. Then he said, “I saw and spoke to an inhabitant of this planet, sir.”
“An intelligent inhabitant, young man?”
“Yes, sir.”
Gentry said, “Sam, we had reason to wonder about you when you came. The Central Computer’s report on you did not match our needs, though it was favorable in many ways, so I took the opportunity to study you that first day. We kept our collective eye on you, and when you left to wander about the planet on your own, we kept you under observation.”
“Sir, “ said Sam, indignantly.
“That violates my right of privacy. “
“Yes, it does, but this is a most vital project and we are some times driven to bend the rules a little. We saw you talking with considerable animation for a substantial period of time.”
“I just told you I was, sir.”
“Yes, but you were talking to nothing, to empty air. You were experiencing a hallucination, Sam! “
Part Three
Sam Chase was speechless. A hallucination? It couldn’t be a hallucination.
Less than half an hour ago, he had been speaking to the Other Sam, had been experiencing the thoughts of the Other Sam. He knew exactly what had happened then, and he was still the same Sam Chase he had been during that conversation and before. He put his elbow over his lunch hamper as though it were a co
He said, with what was almost a stammer, “Sir-Dr. Gentry-it wasn’t a hallucination. It was real.” Gentry shook his head. “My boy, I saw you talking with animation to nothing at all. I didn’t hear what you said, but you were talking. Nothing else was there except plants. Nor was I the only one. There were two other witnesses, and we have it all on record.”
“On record?”
“On a television cassette. Why should we lie to you, young man? This has happened before. At the start it happened rather frequently. Now it happens only very rarely. For one thing, we tell the new
apprentices of the hallucinations at the start, as I told you, and they generally avoid the planet until they are more acclimated, and then it doesn’t happen to them.”
“You mean you scare them,” blurted out Sam, “so that it’s not likely to happen. And they don’t tell you if it does happen. But I wasn’t scared.”
Gentry shook his head. “I’m sorry you weren’t, if that was what it would have taken you to keep from seeing things.”
“I wasn’t seeing things. At least, not things that weren’t there.”
“How do you intend to argue with a television cassette, which will show you staring at nothing?” “Sir, what I saw was not opaque. It was smoky, actually; foggy, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do. It looked as a hallucination might look, not as reality. But the television set would have seen even smoke.”
“Maybe not, sir. My mind must have been focused to see it more clearly. It was probably less clear to the camera than to me.”
“It focused your mind, did it?” Gentry stood up, and he sounded rather sad. “That’s an admission of hallucination. I’m really sorry, Sam, because you are clearly intelligent, and the Central Computer rated you highly, but we can’t use you.”
“Will you be sending me home, sir? “
“Yes, but why should that matter? You didn’t particularly want to come here.”
“I want to stay here now.”
“But I’m afraid you ca
“You can’t just send me home. Don’t I get a hearing?”
“You certainly can, if you insist, but in that case, the proceedings will be official and will go on your record, so that you won’t get another apprenticeship anywhere. As it is, if you are sent back unofficially, as better suited to an apprenticeship in neurophysiology, you might get that, and be better off, actually, than you are now.”
“I don’t want that. I want a hearing-before the Commander.” “Oh, no. Not the Commander. He can’t be bothered with that.”
“It must be the Commander,” said Sam, with desperate force, “or this Project will fail.”
“Unless the Commander gives you a hearing? Why do you say that? Come, you are forcing me to think that you are unstable in ways other than those involved with hallucinations.”
“Sir.” The words were tumbling out of Sam’s mouth now. “The Commander is ill-they know that even on Earth-and if he gets too ill to work, this Project will fail. I did not see a hallucination and the proof is that I know why he is ill and how he can be cured.” “You’re not helping yourself,” said Gentry.
“If you send me away, I tell you the Project will fail. Can it hurt to let me see the Commander? All
I ask is five minutes.”
“Five minutes? What if he refuses?”
“Ask him, sir. Tell him that I say the same thing that caused his depression can remove it.” “No, I don’t think I’ll tell him that. But I’ll ask him if he’ll see you.”
The Commander was a thin man, not very tall. His eyes were a deep blue and they looked tired. His voice was very soft, a little low-pitched, definitely weary.
“You’re the one who saw the hallucination?”
“It was not a hallucination, Commander. It was real. So was the one you saw, Commander.” If that did not get him thrown out, Sam thought, he might have a chance. He felt his elbow tightening on his hamper again. He still had it with him.
The Commander seemed to wince. “The one I saw?”
“Yes, Commander. It said it had hurt one person. They had to try with you because you were the Commander, and they…did damage.”
The Commander ignored that and said, “Did you ever have any mental problems before you came here?”
“No, Commander. You can consult my Central Computer record.”
Sam thought: He must have had problems, but they let it go because he’s a genius and they had to have him.
Then he thought: Was that my own idea? Or had it been put there?
The Commander was speaking. Sam had almost missed it. He said, “What you saw can’t be real. There is no intelligent life-form on this planet.”
“Yes, sir. There is.”
“Oh? And no one ever discovered it till you came here, and in three days you did the job?”
The Commander smiled very briefly. “I’m afraid I have no choice but to-”
“Wait, Commander,” said Sam, in a strangled voice. “We know about the intelligent life-form. It’s the insects, the little flying things.”
“You say the insects are intelligent?”
“Not an individual insect by itself, but they fit together when they want to, like little jigsaw pieces. They can do it in any way they want. And when they do, their nervous systems fit together, too, and build up. A lot of them together are intelligent.”
The Commander’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s an interesting idea, anyway. Almost crazy enough to be true. How did you come to that conclusion, young man?”
“By observation, sir. Everywhere I walked, I disturbed the insects in the grass and they flew about in all directions. But once the cow started to form, and I walked toward it, there was nothing to see or hear. The insects were gone. They had gathered together in front of me and they weren’t in the grass anymore. That’s how I knew.”
“You talked with a cow?”
“It was a cow at first, because that’s what I thought of. But they had it wrong, so they switched and came together to form a human being-me.”
“You?” And then, in a lower voice, “Well, that fits anyway.”