They went out through the hole in the building, up through dark streets in a gloaming only spottily relieved by the few undamaged streetlights remaining, across the square and toward the edge of the city. The few black-clad people they met paid no attention to them. Neither did the color-dressed people—which brought the girl down in a slight case of sniffles by the time they reached the edge of the city.
"Going to be a fine walk in the dark," said Feliz gloomily. “Well, it’s not far, anyway,” said the girl.
“Hah,” said Feliz. “Don’t tell me. I’ve walked it.”
“Yes, but you went all crooked,” said the girl. “I was watching you. Actually, we should be there in about ten minutes.”
She was right of course.
"Wow! said Feliz, as he helped the girl through the hatch and closed it behind him. The interior lights in the control room and the cabin, and what had once been the galley, went on automatically. "I could eat a horse and sleep for a week."
"What a horse? Could you?" said the girl. "Why?"
"Ever hear of an accelerated metabolism?"
"No."
"Well, that's what I've got—naturally," said Feliz. "I need sleep and food. Lots of both. Of course, I have a fair amount of energy—" He was opening the food locker and hauling out items already processed and prepared. "Ah!” he had just found the remains of the beef. He tore off a large piece and put it in his mouth. Manna from heaven, that’s what it tasted like, he thought. “Help yourself,” he mumbled to the girl.
She poked interestedly among the pile of comestibles. “What funny food.”
“Funny?” said Feliz around a mouthful of cheese and bread. “What’s funny about it? What do you eat?”
“Fruits,” she said. “Nuts. Vegetables, raw. Natural food. Nature’s bounty.”
“How about that synthetic gunk I got in that prison?”
“Oh, that—that’s what the hallucinations eat.”
“Hallucinations!" barked Feliz. “Don’t start that again.”
The girl sat down suddenly in the pilot’s control board chair with a thump and began to keen like a rejected puppy. “Oh, I’m so mixed up,” she wailed.
"Hold it! Hold it! Cut it out!" cried Feliz hastily. "Maybe I can help you.”
The girl stuck her head up.
“Would you?” she said.
"Can try, can’t I?” growled Feliz. The girl uncurled and sat up in the chair. “Suppose you fill me in on what happened to you anyway.”
The girl sniffed, but kept control of herself.
“Well,” she said, “I’m an artist.”
“Go on. Go on.”
“Well,” she said, “I mean, we’re all artists of course, in the sense that the human mind needs to find one means or another for creative self-expression. But I’m a painter, of the new classic school of expression.”
Feliz’s eyebrows went up.
“You mean you don’t know? I thought everybody knew that. The new classic school of thought believes in interpretative representationalism. ”
Feliz’s eyebrows stayed up.
“Well, you know! No, I suppose you don’t. Well, you know what representational painting is, don’t you? You see a house and you paint a house. It’s like making a print of it. Well, interpretative representationalism is when you represent the house exactly as it is; but through the modified use of color and the addition of imaginative detail you interpret the scene in terms of your own personal-creative essential and make it manifest.”
Feliz’s eyebrows came down, defeated.
“You do understand what I mean?” she said.
“Absolutely,” he told her.
“Well, there you have it. It was all so wonderful, and .then”—the girl’s voice began to grow moist again— “I began putting in imaginative details that were just like hallucinations.”
“Hold it,” said Feliz. “Please.”
“I was a fool! ” said the girl, covering her eyes with the palm of one hand and extending the other at arm’s length, palm out, as if warding off something. "Wasn’t I a fool? Tell me I was a fool.”
“Why?” said Feliz. “How should I know if you were or not?”
The girl took the palm away from her eyes, indignantly. “You aren’t very helpful,” she said.
Feliz yawned hugely. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open, now that he had no empty stomach to prod him awake.
“Need . . . little sleep,” he said.
“But I’m not finished.”
“Oh. . .” Feliz yawned again. “Okay. Go on.”
"Well, sooner or later I was bound to be discovered. I said to a good friend of mine, Esi Malto—I said to her, Esi, I really shouldn’t mention this to a soul . . .”
Feliz dozed off, in spite of his good intentions.
“ . . . and bang! I was disintegrated.”
Feliz sat up with a jerk. He had missed a lot evidently. No matter. Tomorrow was another day. What was he thinking of? A couple hours of nap and he would be fine.
He lurched to his feet and across the control room to the cabin.
“Twen’ winks . . ." he muttered, fell on the bunk and was lost to the world.
When he woke, the hatch to the ship was open, letting sunlight flood across half the floor on the control room. Was it. . .? Yes, it was morning. Must be. Feliz sat up, massaging the stiff cords of his neck.
"Hark, hark," the girl was singing, somewhere outside the ship:
—the lark doth greet the new-born day.
With joyous heart and bright array.
‘Joy! Joy! doth say.
And air-borne, flitteth on his way.
“Snubg, smudg,” grunted Feliz, scrubbing his wire- bristled, forty-eight-hour beard with a sleep-numbed fist; and, earth-borne, clumped heavily into the ship’s washroom, where he undressed, climbed under the shower and turned it on, smoking hot.
About twenty minutes later, shaved, cleanly dressed and awake at last, he emerged. The girl, he found, was seated at the control desk. From somewhere she had produced a stick of charcoal and was drawing something on a clean page of his log book. Feliz took a closer look. It was a sketch of a sort of hairy monster in Feliz’s clothes, stretched out on its back with its mouth open, asleep and obviously snoring.
“Thanks,” said Feliz.
"Oh, do you like it?” said the girl, looking up. “I put a lot of myself into it.”
“Yeah,” said Feliz. “I’d like it better if it wasn’t in my log book." Feliz was realizing just now that he’d forgotten to get rid of the log with his other identification; not that it seemed to matter now.
“Why?”
“Because—never mind,” said Feliz. “I’m sure the port inspectors will understand.” He rubbed his hands together. “Well! How about a bite of breakfast?”
“Are you hungry again?” said the girl. “You ate just before you fell asleep.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” asked Feliz, rummaging in the food locker. Abruptly, he stopped rummaging, stood upright, turned about and began to walk across the control room toward the open hatch.
“Are you going somewhere?” said the girl.
“Yes!” yelled Feliz, climbing out of the hatch. “Stop me!”
He reached the ground and, turning toward the city, began to march off.
“Help!” he shouted.
The girl scrambled out of the hatch and hurried after him.
“Don’t you want to go?” she said. “If you don’t want to go wherever it is you’re going, why are you going?”
“Because I can’t help myself. Something’s making me go.”
“Oh!” said the girl.
“What do you mean, oh?” demanded Feliz, looking sideways and down at her as she hurried to keep up.
“You’re under compulsion.”
“Yes,” said Feliz. "I would say that. I would say that I was under some sort of compulsion. Yes, I think that describes it rather well.”
“You don’t have to be mean about it,” said the girl.
They walked on a little farther and entered under the trees that reached to the slope overlooking the city.
"What did you do to get put under compulsion?" said the girl.
“I met that old unmentionable bag of bones that calls himself your mayor!” snarled Feliz, his face purple with effort from the unsuccessful fight he was making against the coercion being exercised upon him. “The misbegotten unclean article of refuse did this to me once before!”
“Oh, dear,” said the girl. “El Hoska is awfully severe. He’s the one who disintegrated me.”
Feliz craned his neck to stare at her.
“Him? The same one?”
“He said”—the girl’s lower lip began to quiver at the memory—“I’d become so maladjusted that there was no longer any hope of correcting me. He said I was a danger to the community. I would have to be disintegrated—I told you all this last night.”
“Tell me again.”
“He told me I’d have to be disintegrated. And he snapped his fingers and bang! Just like that I ceased to exist.”
“So that’s it,” said Feliz, thoughtfully.
“What’s what?”
“Nothing,” said Feliz. “You wouldn’t understand. Except you might as well get used to the idea that you weren’t really disintegrated after all. You didn’t cease to exist at all. ”
“Oh, yes, I did.”
“Of course you didn’t. You exist right now, don’t you? For pete’s sake!” said Feliz exasperatedly.
“Well, I most certainly do not! I guess I know whether I exist or not!"
“If you don’t exist, how come I see you and hear you?”
“You’re just an hallucination,” said the girl stubbornly. But there was a quaver of uncertainty in her voice.
They had been following the nearest thing to a straight line among the trees. Now they came out near the stone wall where Feliz had first met El Hoska. And there, sure enough, was the elderly gentlemam, seated on the comer of his wall.
“Good morning, good morning, good morning! ” he said, leaping to his sandled feet as Feliz marched up. “You had a pleasant night, I trust?”
“I don’t suppose,” said Feliz in measured tones, “that there would be any particular use in asking you to turn me loose?”
“But, my boy! ” said El Hoska. “If you really, basically, did not wish to fall in with my desires, certainly you wouldn’t do so. The human mind is a free entity. How can I possibly force you to do what you do not want to do?”
“Because,” said Feliz between his teeth, “you happen to be a natural psi talent. Psi-Man Verde—you don’t know him, but he’s a lot like you—would probably give his right arm and half his left to get you on his staff.”
“Come, come,” said El Hoska, gently. “This is wild talk. You are like most ignorant people who have had little contact with civilization—you instinctively fear the natural forces and science. You must understand such fears are mere superstition.”
“Superstition?” said Feliz.
"Of course! What you think to be compulsion upon you is merely a strong desire, a strong, loving desire on the part of all my happy people to have a closer acquaintance with you. Naturally, since I am my people’s representative, the desire is channeled through me. Dear, dear," said El Hoska reprovingly, “you have never been taught that this is a moral universe we live in. No one can coerce anyone else against his will. If it looks like someone is being made to do something he doesn’t wish, you can rest assured this is only an illusion. Basically, the coerced one wants the illusion of being dominated. This is very good science.”
“It is?” said Feliz.
“Dear me, yes. ” El Hoska linked his arm in Feliz’s, and began to lead off down toward the city. Feliz’s legs carried him right along with the old man. "I have thought of the very thing to occupy your time while you are getting to know us better here. For a long time—”
"Just a minute," said Feliz. "I just thought of something. Have you two been introduced?” And he nodded from El Hoska to the girl, who was walking along at his other side and looking mournful.
"I beg your pardon?" said El Hoska, peering around Feliz at that side of him where the girl was.
“Her!” shouted Feliz, jerking a thumb at the girl. “The one you disintegrated, remember?”
“But there is nobody here but the two of us,” said El Hoska. The girl began to sob quietly. "Oh! ” said the mayor suddenly. “You wouldn’t—you haven’t possibly happened to hear about Kai Miri, the little girl we were forced to disintegrate a few days ago? Is that who you mean?”
“That’s right. Her,” said Feliz.“The one walking right here beside me right now.”
“There, there,” said the mayor. “You are obviously a badly maladjusted young man. Think now. Look at the matter logically. When that poor girl was disintegrated, the atoms of her mortal body were scattered over a tremendous area, and the natural currents of the air will have dispersed them even further. Don’t you see how impossible it would be to collect them all in one spot? Even if by doing so you could restore them to their original order and restore her to life. ”
Kai Miri began to sob louder—probably, thought Feliz, at the thought of the wide areas over which the natural currents of the air had dispersed the atoms of her mortal body.
"Never mind!" growled Feliz, patting her shoulder clumsily. “Forget it!”
"Tch, tch, ” said the mayor, observing. “You must really let me give you some special counseling, my boy, when we have the opportunity.
“I’m leaving,” said Feliz. He continued, however, to march toward the city. They were at its outskirts now.
“No, no,” said the mayor. “In your present precarious state of mental balance, it would be dangerous, extremely dangerous. Besides, wait until you see what I have for you to do.”
“What?” demanded Feliz.
El Hoska folded his hands benignly together as he strode along.
“How beautiful is nature!” he said.
“What do you have for me to do?” said Feliz, staring at him.
“We who have passed beyond the stage of a mechanical civilization,” he said, “have little use for the city’s ancient appurtenances, beyond those required for basic shelter. There is, however, one exception. That is the public square. The ideal gathering place for social meeting and discussion—except for one thing.”
He paused and paced along with his eyes closed. Felizs tubbornly kept his own mouth in closed position. If he thinks, thought Feliz, that I’m going to play straight man by asking him ...
“That is,” said El Hoska, opening his eyes again, with no visible sign of irritation, “a lack of water. The sun, the air, the good earth is there—”
"Where?" asked Feliz, thinking of the unbroken expanse of black and white plastic pavement.
"But," said El Hoska, ignoring the interruption, "there is no water. What the spirit craves in this ideal gathering place is a tinkling fountain rising in its midst. It would be a refreshment to the souls of all who gather there. Besides, the nearest good well is five city blocks away, if one happens to be thirsty."
“I see,” said Feliz.
“Yes. And you," Eli Hoska said, “being a more primitive man, used to fumbling with mechanical tilings, are the ideal one to construct such a fountain for us.”
"And if I don’t, you'll disintegrate me?" said Feliz, with a sudden ray of hope.
“How can you think of such a thing!” said El Hoska, shocked. “No, no, my boy. Someday you may basically wish to be disintegrated, and then, of course we may have to oblige you. But that day is not yet.”
“It isn’t?”
“Dear me, no. You can trust me. I’ll let you know when you want to be disintegrated.”
“Thanks,” said Feliz.
“Not at all. Within this city,” said the mayor as they left the last of the buildings behind and stepped out into the square itself, “you will come face to face with the reality your warped and primitive mind has heretofore denied. And, basically, you want this. Basically, you do not want to leave, I can tell that. Basically, your desire is so great that right now I do not believe you could find it in you to tear yourself from my side for any reason. With me, you will find inspiration."
“That’s not all I’ll find,” said Feliz, beginning to sweat. Two of the black-uniformed men in the square had already recognized him and now they were approaching at a run. The order had evidently gone out to take no chances, for they were letting their night sticks dangle from their belt, and drawing sidearms as they came.
“Halt, spy!” shouted the nearer of the two. “Make a move and you will be shot. Surrender yourself, and come with us!”
“True,” El Hoska was.saying reflectively as they strolled along, "you will undoubtedly find this city making its impact upon you in many different ways. Come along, my boy, and do not stare so wildly at the empty air.”