THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION

"

Is your silence one of ignorance or resistance?" Malva inquired.

He wanted to lie, but found he could not. That requIRed TOO great an act of volition. His choice was between the truth and the refusal to answer. He refused to answer.

Malva nodded, unsurprised. "So you do know something, and the Imago has corrupted you. Let me remind you of the alternatives. There are possible advantages to cooperation-" The screen behind her showed a bed sliding out from a wall, and to this bed came the image of Malva herself, her cloak dissolving away, her breasts and buttocks quivering as she walked. From the other side came Jack, his clothing dissolving similarly away to reveal the erection he really did have. Malva lay on the bed, smiling invitingly as she spread her legs.

But Jack knew this was merely a sophisticated show. This woman had no interest in him, only in his information. She might indeed offer sex to him, to obtain it, but the moment she got it she might have his skin made into a lampshade. Meanwhile, the thought of Tappy as a drugged and imprisoned thing, kept artificially alive for most of a century, was such a horror that Malva's temptation became anathema. He remaned silent.

"And disadvantages to noncooperation," Malva continued after a moment. The bed became the rack, the curtains of the room transforming to flames, and the body on the rack became Tappy, her small breasts shaking as she writhed with fear. The Jack figure do

He extended that tip toward Tappy's genital region, angling it, threatening to rape her with it.

The substitution of Tappy as the object of torture was startling.

Not only did it show the versatility of Malva's control of the unages, it betrayed the falsity of them. There was no marbleswelling be een the image's breasts. Malva didn't know about that, and he would not tell her. He was unable to look away, but he tuned out the image as irrelevant. Malva was bluffing, and he had found her out, and now his hand was greatly strengthened.

He was learning about bluffs!

"What is your statement?" Malva inquired.

That gave him more latitude; he no longer had to betray Tappy or be silent. He called Malva's bluff. "You can not torture the Imago. You probably can't torture me either, or you would have done it by now. Your masters don't give you that much authority."

Malva pursed her lips as the mountains reappeared behind her.

"You may be ignorant, but you are not entirely stupid. It is true that I am limited to the mechanisms of oblique persuasion. But it is also true that the end will be the same, and that you will find it far more comfortable to deal with me than with the Gaol. I will proffer one further offer, which will not be repeated. Give me the information I require-I see that you do have it-and I will grant you one year of extremely comfortable life with the woman of our choice, which may be me or a simulation of Tappy or any other you prefer, and subsequent return unharmed to your own planet. Face the Imago."

Jack obeyed the directive. He turned to face Tappy, who stood moving. She looked like a street waif in her oversized er her nightie. Her only expression was a single small timecheek.

o, I can not force you to do ANYTHING," Malva said. "But e your host to give your companion an honest answer.

You know enough of the Gaol and their human minions to judge whether my offer will be honored if Jack agrees. You know he must make his own decision, based on the truth, so you have no motive to deceive him. Answer him: is my offer valid?"

The tear accelerated. Slowly Tappy nodded yes.

"Your answer, Jack."

It seemed like folly, since the woman would discover the marble the moment Tappy was stripped for her incarceration.

Yet two things stopped Jack from capitulating. The first was that he suspected Malva was still bluffing; she was desperate to make him tell, so was pulling out all the stops, and she wouldn't do that without good reason. So there had to be reason for him not to cooperate. Maybe there was some way to save Tappy. Or maybe it was simply that Malva was expected to handle things, and the Gaol would be a

The second reason was that no matter how intich objective sense it might make, he could not betray Tappy, and this would be a betrayal. Her tear told him that. "No."

"Go down the ramp and enter the small craft at the exit, " Malva said. "It will convey you to the Gaol." Her voice was controlled, but Jack thought he could detect a slight stress in it: the stress of fear or of fury. Whatever else he had failed to do, he had scored against her.

But his body was already moving, as was Tappy's. That single shot from the null-volition pistol had really fixed them! Ap!'.,irently the effect continued until nullified, and no other restraints were needed. Not for enough time to get them safely to the Gaol.

Malva had to be sure of that, or she would have taken other precautions.

Now, of course, his doubts loomed. What had he accomplished by his defiance? He hadn't saved Tappy, but he had doomed himself. He was a painter, not a hard-nosed negotiator!

There were two seats in the little vehicle, which looked like a gull-wing door car with the doors left open. They got in, but the doors did not swing down. Instead a slight scintillation indicated the presence of a force field that sealed in the car. Then it rolled forward, accelerating like a jet plane, and took off. Those gull wings really were wings! This was an airplane. Jack would have gaped, but no one had authorized him to do so, so his mouth remained closed.

The plane flew low over the forest, evidently programmed so precisely that the close clearance was no problem. Then it lifted, and Jack saw the huge crater valley where they had entered this world, with its gigantic symbols around the rim. The symbols that moved grandly around, periodically, like the elapsed-time ring on a diver's watch, making a new setting.

Now, flying over it, he saw that the depression was far too regular to be a natural crater. It was either artificial or had been excavated and reshaped after its formation, for some alien purpose.

That reminded him of another mystery: the brief redness of the river he had seen. What could have caused that? There was so much about this planet he still didn't know!

There was a touch on his shoulder. Jack turned to face it, taking it as a command for attention, before he realized the significance of it. Tappy was the only one beside him-and she had done it.

She had volition!

Tappy's finger touched her lips in the signal for silence. You bet! A radio could be monitoring

this cabin, as a routine precaution. If she had somehow thrown off the effect of the shot, he would keep her secret. But his own body remained helpless.

Tappy pointed to the panel before them. He looked, again obeying the implied directive. He could obey her as well as Malva; it didn't matter who gave the orders, or how they were given.

There was something like a steering wheel there, recessed into the panel. That must be for use by the pilot when this craft was not on programmed flight.

Tappy's hand extended until it touched the panel, then slid along it until she felt the wheel. She nodded. Then she found Jack's arm and guided his hand to the wheel. She made a gesture of pulling it toward him.

She was telling him to fly this thing? He looked at her, startled.

She nodded yes, knowing his question.

But he couldn't do that! He had no idea how to operate a normal .9irplane, let alone this alien craft.

But the alternative was to let the two of them be flown to meet the Gaol. He had no idea what the aliens looked like, but formed a mental picture of huge sluglike monsters whose proboscises sucked out the guts of human beings. Surely false, but it made the point: it was better to crash this craft than to suffer what the aliens had in store for them. -He had been given his directive. Now his arms and head were -Vee. He took hold of the wheel and pulled it toward him. It didn't move. It was locked in place. Probably it required a special key or code to free it, to prevent exactly such an accident as this one.