team.
'It's
like the blind man trying to describe the elephant. Osden hasn't seen or heard
the ... the sentience, any more than we have.'
'But
he's felt it, my dear Haito,' Harfex said with just-suppressed rage. 'Not
empathically. On his skull. It came and knocked him down and beat him with a
blunt instrument. Did he not catch one glimpse of
it?'
'What
would he have seen, Harfex?' Tomiko asked, but he would not hear her meaningful
tone; even he had blocked out that comprehension. What one fears is alien. The
murderer is an outsider, a foreigner, not one of us. The evil is not in me!
'The
first blow knocked him pretty well out,' Tomiko said a little wearily, 'he
didn't see anything. But when he came to again, alone in the forest, he felt a
great fear. Not his own fear, an empathic effect. He is certain of that. And
certain it was nothing picked up from any of us. So that evidently the native
life-forms are not all insentient.'
Harfex
looked at her a moment, grim. 'You're trying to frighten me, Haito. I do not
understand your motives.' He got up and went off to his laboratory table,
walking slowly and stiffly, like a man of eighty not of forty.
She
looked round at the others. She felt some desperation. Her new, fragile, and
profound interdependence with Osden gave her, she was well aware, some added
strength. But if even Harfex could not keep his head, who of the others would?
Porlock and Eskwana were shut in their cubicles, the others were all working or
busy with something. There was something queer about their positions. For a
while the Coordinator could not tell what it was, then she saw that they were
all sitting facing the nearby forest. Playing chess with Asnanifoil, Olleroo
had edged her chair around until it was almost beside his.
She
went to Mannon, who was dissecting a tangle of spidery brown roots, and told
him to look for the pattern-puzzle. He saw it at once, and said with unusual
brevity, 'Keeping an eye on the enemy.'
'What
enemy? What do you feel, Mannon?' She had a sudden hope
in him as a psychologist, on this obscure ground of hints and empathies where
biologists went astray.
'I
feel a strong anxiety with a specific spatial orientation. But I am not an
empath. Therefore the anxiety is explicable in terms of the particular stress-situation,
that is, the attack on a team member in the forest, and also in terms of the
total stress-situation, that is, my presence in a totally alien environment,
for which the archetypical connotations of the word "forest" provide
an inevitable metaphor.'
Hours
later Tomiko woke to hear Osden screaming in nightmare; Mannon was calming him,
and she sank back into her own dark-branching pathless dreams. In the morning
Eskwana did not wake. He could not be roused with stimulant drugs. He clung to
his sleep, slipping farther and farther back, mumbling softly now and then
until, wholly regressed, he lay curled on his side, thumb at his lips, gone.
'Two
days; two down. Ten little Indians, nine little Indians ...' That was Porlock.
'And
you're the next little Indian,' Jenny Chong snapped. 'Go analyze your urine,
Porlock!'
'He
is driving us all insane,' Porlock said, getting up and waving his left arm.
'Can't you feel it? For God's sake, are you all deaf and blind? Can't you feel
what he's doing, the emanations? It all comes from him - from his room there -
from his mind. He is driving us all insane with fear!'
'Who
is?' said Asnanifoil, looming precipitous and hairy over the little Terran.
'Do
I have to say his name? Osden, then. Osden! Osden! Why do you think I tried to
kill him? In self-defense! To save all of us! Because you won't see what he's
doing to us. He's sabotaged the mission by making us quarrel, and now he's
going to drive us all insane by projecting fear at us so that we can't sleep or
think, like a huge radio that doesn't make any sound, but it broadcasts all the
time, and you can't sleep, and you can't think. Haito and Harfex are already
under his control but
'It's
like the blind man trying to describe the elephant. Osden hasn't seen or heard
the ... the sentience, any more than we have.'
'But
he's felt it, my dear Haito,' Harfex said with just-suppressed rage. 'Not
empathically. On his skull. It came and knocked him down and beat him with a
blunt instrument. Did he not catch one glimpse of
it?'
'What
would he have seen, Harfex?' Tomiko asked, but he would not hear her meaningful
tone; even he had blocked out that comprehension. What one fears is alien. The
murderer is an outsider, a foreigner, not one of us. The evil is not in me!
'The
first blow knocked him pretty well out,' Tomiko said a little wearily, 'he
didn't see anything. But when he came to again, alone in the forest, he felt a
great fear. Not his own fear, an empathic effect. He is certain of that. And
certain it was nothing picked up from any of us. So that evidently the native
life-forms are not all insentient.'
Harfex
looked at her a moment, grim. 'You're trying to frighten me, Haito. I do not
understand your motives.' He got up and went off to his laboratory table,
walking slowly and stiffly, like a man of eighty not of forty.
She
looked round at the others. She felt some desperation. Her new, fragile, and
profound interdependence with Osden gave her, she was well aware, some added
strength. But if even Harfex could not keep his head, who of the others would?
Porlock and Eskwana were shut in their cubicles, the others were all working or
busy with something. There was something queer about their positions. For a
while the Coordinator could not tell what it was, then she saw that they were
all sitting facing the nearby forest. Playing chess with Asnanifoil, Olleroo
had edged her chair around until it was almost beside his.
She
went to Mannon, who was dissecting a tangle of spidery brown roots, and told
him to look for the pattern-puzzle. He saw it at once, and said with unusual
brevity, 'Keeping an eye on the enemy.'
'What
enemy? What do you feel, Mannon?' She had a sudden hope
in him as a psychologist, on this obscure ground of hints and empathies where
biologists went astray.
'I
feel a strong anxiety with a specific spatial orientation. But I am not an
empath. Therefore the anxiety is explicable in terms of the particular stress-situation,
that is, the attack on a team member in the forest, and also in terms of the
total stress-situation, that is, my presence in a totally alien environment,
for which the archetypical connotations of the word "forest" provide
an inevitable metaphor.'
Hours
later Tomiko woke to hear Osden screaming in nightmare; Mannon was calming him,
and she sank back into her own dark-branching pathless dreams. In the morning
Eskwana did not wake. He could not be roused with stimulant drugs. He clung to
his sleep, slipping farther and farther back, mumbling softly now and then
until, wholly regressed, he lay curled on his side, thumb at his lips, gone.
'Two
days; two down. Ten little Indians, nine little Indians ...' That was Porlock.
'And
you're the next little Indian,' Jenny Chong snapped. 'Go analyze your urine,
Porlock!'
'He
is driving us all insane,' Porlock said, getting up and waving his left arm.
'Can't you feel it? For God's sake, are you all deaf and blind? Can't you feel
what he's doing, the emanations? It all comes from him - from his room there -
from his mind. He is driving us all insane with fear!'
'Who
is?' said Asnanifoil, looming precipitous and hairy over the little Terran.
'Do
I have to say his name? Osden, then. Osden! Osden! Why do you think I tried to
kill him? In self-defense! To save all of us! Because you won't see what he's
doing to us. He's sabotaged the mission by making us quarrel, and now he's
going to drive us all insane by projecting fear at us so that we can't sleep or
think, like a huge radio that doesn't make any sound, but it broadcasts all the
time, and you can't sleep, and you can't think. Haito and Harfex are already
under his control but
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