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 I never cared for it. I remember when she used to come home in tears her
schoolmates were teasing her by calling her  Diarrhea. Remember, Darla-
darling?
 I m glad to say I ve repressed that.
Vance laughed.
I was sitting in another armchair with nothing binding me, and I thought now
would be a good time to get up. I started to.
 Roadmap! Wilkes said sharply.
I was startled enough to plop back down, then looked around for someone with a
gun. Nobody was holding one on me. I felt weak. My head felt like a ball of
fuzz sitting on my shoulders.  You won t be able to get up, Jake, Wilkes
informed me.  I planted the posthypnotic suggestion while you were under.
Actually, I should say posthypnogogic. This thing doesn t induce a standard
hypnotic trance. He held up a thin bright-green tube about half a meter long.
 Subjects are ten times more suggestible under it.
Even consciously being aware of the plant doesn t break the spell.
 The Reticulans are very good at mind-control technology, Vance said.
 Unfortunately, Wilkes said,  they don t know enough about human physiology
yet to make this thing really useful. Twrrrll tells me they re working on it,
but we re still as much a mystery to them as they are to us. If you were a
Rikki, Jake, you d be my obsequious slave, and would tell me anything I d want
to know, or do anything
I d want you to do. As it is, all the wand does to humans is either knock  em
out or turn them into shambling hulks in a highly suggestible state and I m
not enough of a psychometrician or a hypnotist to always get the results I
need. He brandished the wand at me in the manner of a headmaster reprimanding
a wayward pupil.  You re a tough customer, mister, I m not at all sure I could
make you
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tell me where you ve hidden your little alien friend and even if I could, I
have the sneaking suspicion
I m going to need your active cooperation to actually get hold of her. You ve
got her stashed with somebody on board, somebody a group, I bet with whom we
can t readily punk around. A gaggle of
Buddhist nuns... boy scouts... the damn Archbishop of Sea-home and his
acolytes. I wouldn t be surprised. You re slippery, Jake. Slippery. No, I m
afraid I ll have to resort to old-fashioned methods of persuasion.
Meantime... He stroked the wand lovingly.  This gizmo will keep you right
where I want you.
Vance said,  I suppose a truth drug wouldn t do either? Wilkes shook his head
disdainfully, continuing to caress the wand.
 Ingenious little things, he went on.  Very powerful. The effect can cover a
city block. You adjust the field-strength here. He fiddled with one end of
the rod, which was ringed with a wide silver band.
 This doodad here. The only drawback is that the effect can be thwarted by
taking a simple tranquilizer.
Of course, if the subject doesn t know that...
 Tranquilizer?
 Yes. You d think the opposite would be true, wouldn t you? A high-altitude
pill of some kind. An antidepressant. The way I understand it, that does
almost no good at all.  Almost, I said, feeling foolish.
 Why, are you on something? You did seem to be semiaware while you were under.
Good try, Jake.
 Seemed like a hell of a good idea at the time.
 I m curious, though. Did you actually know about the dream wand? Did you
happen to be awake that night when we walked in at the commune?
 Commune?
 The religious -group s place. When a subject s already in normal sleep,
there s no awareness of going under.
I looked at Darla briefly. She looked slightly confused, so I thought it would
be better not to mention the wand s use at the Militia station.
Wilkes picked up the byplay and looked at Darla, then at me.  Something? he
asked.  We do have the mystery of Jake s escape from the Militia station to
explain, Vance reminded him.
 Oh, yes. Twrrrll was sure he detected another wand in operation there. But
that was most likely the
Ryxx, don t you think?
 How did they get hold of a dream wand?
 Oh, the Ryxx are master traders. They probably paid the right price to a
renegade Rikki and got it.
Or they may have a similar technique of their own. Besides, we did see two
Ryxx nearby. Vance grunted noncommittally.
 Who knows? Wilkes conceded.  They may not have done it, but they have just
as much reason as we do to keep the map secret. Granted, it s hard to
understand why they didn t grab Jake as soon as he came out, or try to,
anyway. But they didn t.
And I m not going to waste time wondering why. Someone got him out of there,
for whatever treason.
I said,  May I ask a question?
 Sure, Wilkes said.
 Why did you come to the Teelies farm that night?
 You d have to see to understand. Darla, would you call Twrrrll in here?
Darla didn t get up. Vance rose and said,  I will. He went to the connecting
hatch, opened it, and called the alien s name.
After a moment, Twrrrll came in. It struck me how tall he was, how sickly thin
his limbs were, and how they contrasted with his seven-digited, powerful
hands, hands that could envelop a human head and
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squeeze. His feet were huge as well. He wore no clothing except for
crisscrossing strips of leatherlike material that wrapped his thorax like a
harness.  May I be of serrrvice? the alien asked.
 Jake would like to see the mrrrllowharrr, Wilkes said.
 Verrry well.
It was a strange sensation to see him undrape an invisible something from his
shoulders and cradle it in his hands. Stranger still to watch him stroke it
with two fingers and trill to it softly. As he did so, something even more
unsettling was happening to my perceptual apparatus. It wasn t like watching [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]