19

The program over, Marshall was relocated again, this time to the giant cylinder, to the highest of its balconies, from which he and Lorak could look out on the others.

The other balconies were full. As in the recorded scene, each held a Zetan and a colleague laboring together over an unconscious human on a gurney.

“Consider,” said Lorak, “that in all their time among us, not one of your fellows has received the knowledge that you have been given today.”

It was an intriguing comment, yet Marshall seemed not to hear it. He just stared downward, his breathing ragged, his eyes darting from balcony to balcony.

“Do you not wonder why?” said Lorak.

“The reason,” he continued, despite the silence that met this question, “is that you require this knowledge so as to assist us in—”

Breaking off, he took the human by the arm and tried to pull him from the edge of the platform.

“Come now,” he said. “Your advance is too rapid. Clearly you must rest before assimilating any further—”

But Marshall would not be pulled. And now his mouth was quivering in a way that suggested he might even be on the verge of saying something to the figures below.

Lorak switched gears.

“Newcomer!?” he barked. “Newcomer, attend! The information you have received is not for your fellows. Any of them, should they acquire it, will be redesignated as experimental subjects. You too, should you disclose it, will be so designated. Do you understand? Acknowledge us at once if you wish to retain the privileged position we have granted you.”

And as he said this, he extracted a small object from his suit.

It made no difference, though.

Marshall said something anyway.

True, it wasn’t much. Only a word. A syllable. But he issued it in a manner that fit the occasion. He bellowed it, mightily. He projected it with everything his lungs could put behind it, so that it echoed back and forth off the surface of the cylinder, causing both Zetans and colleagues to look up from their work.

“Nooooooooooooooooo . . .”

And he took so long saying it, that he had time to realize two important facts.

First, that he was almost certainly on his way to becoming an experimental subject on one of those gurneys.

And second, that if he wanted to say anything else, he had better get started.

So he did. Or tried to.

“You call yourselves commensurate?” he shouted, snatching at whatever words he could find at a moment’s notice. “Well, what I want to know is, what’s commensurate about, uh . . .”

He might have asked how commensurate it was with basic decency to turn living beings into unwitting destroyers of all they cared about, but couldn’t find those words. With the result that seconds after he had begun, he was done. Leaving Lorak with about a hundred times his usual justification for using the neural hyperstimulator.

For some reason, though, Lorak did not use it. He just went on pulling the human’s arm, while urging him to “remember the offer you made to us in your transmission.”

With the result that the human did remember that offer. And finally his brain cleared.

“No one,” he cried into the cylinder, “can question my sincerity. Everyone knows from my transmission how I long for my planet’s takeover by a worthy and industrious species like yours. However, you also know that I made a clear stipulation in my offer to join you. Yes, I offered to, but”—he raised a finger—“only in exchange for a tour of the universe.”

He turned and addressed Lorak directly.

“Not the whole thing, of course; I realize you can’t show me the whole thing. But a few solar systems? An interesting region off in some other galaxy somewhere? Why not? A few years of that and I'll get straight to work, I promise. While you—you will have honored the agreement you entered into by taking me, which is crucial, isn’t it? For how can you get the best out of us if you don’t honor your agreements? How can you expect, say”—he pointed at a balcony—“Dr. Crennick over there to pour himself into his labors if he doesn’t know whether, in the end, he'll get donuts, as promised, or—surprise!—basic nutrition!? Or what about him?” He indicated von Freunhoffer. “What kind of liaison would he be if his best efforts might lead to a cot in the intake unit?

“How, in short, can you espouse the principle of commensurateness, so indispensable to your relations with us semi-sentients, then cast aside that very principle?”