Wade took a restless turn about the room. “It’s a weird business,” he said thinly. “I’m not sure I like the idea of having all four together—in this very place.”

  “What can they do?” shrugged Lucientes. “My men captured Villareal here in Buenos Aires yesterday. He had been an artist, supposedly, and dropped out of sight when word first came about a fugitive Un-man answering that description. But he made a childish attempt to get back to his apartment and was arrested without difficulty. Martinez was obtained in Panama City with equal ease. If they are that incompetent—”

  “But they aren’t! They’re anything but!” Wade glared at the prisoners. “This was done on purpose, I tell you. Why?”

  “I already said—” Naysmith and Villareal spoke almost simultaneously. They stopped, and the Argentine grinned and closed his mouth. “I told you,” Naysmith finished. “We wanted to bargain. There was no other quick and expedient way of making the sort of contact we needed.”

  “Were four of you needed?” snapped Wade. “Four valuable men?”

  “Perhaps not so valuable,” said Lewin quietly. “Not if there are any number of them still at large.”

  “They are not supernatural!” protested Lucientes. “They are flesh and blood. They can feel pain, and cannot break handcuffs. I know! Nor are they telepaths or anything equally absurd. They are—” His voice faltered.

  “Yes?” challenged Wade. “They are what?”

  Naysmith drew into himself. There was a moment of utter stillness. Only the heavy breathing of the captors, the captors half terrified by an unknown, and all the more vicious and deadly because of that, had voice.

  The real reason was simple, thought Naysmith—so simple that it defeated those tortuous minds. It had seemed reasonable, and Christian’s logic had confirmed the high probability, that one man identical with the agent who had been killed would be unsettling enough, and that four of them, from four different countries, would imply something so enormous that the chief conspirator would want them all together in his own strongest and most secret place, that he himself would want to be there at the questioning.

  Only what happened next?

  “They aren’t human!” Borrow’s voice was shrill and wavering. “They can’t be. Not four or five or a thousand identical men. The U.N. has its own laboratories. Fourre could easily have had secret projects carried out.”

  “So?” Lewin’s eyes blinked sardonically at the white face.

  “So they’re robots—androids, synthetic life—whatever you want to call it. Test-tube monsters!”

  Lewin shook his head, grimly. “That’s too big a stride forward,” he said. “No human science will be able to do that for centuries to come. You don’t appreciate the complexity of a living human being—and our best efforts haven’t yet synthesized even one functioning cell. I admit these fellows have something superhuman-about them. They’ve done incredible things. But they can’t be robots. It isn’t humanly possible.”

  “Humanly!” screamed Borrow. “Is man the only scientific race in the universe? How about creatures from the stars? Who’s the real power behind the U.N.?”

  “That will do,” snapped Wade. “We’ll find out pretty soon.” His look fastened harsh on Naysmith. “Let’s forget this stupid talk of bargaining. There can be no compromise until one or the other party is done for.”

  That’s right. The same thought quivered in four living brains.

  “I—” Wade stopped and swung toward the door. It opened for two men who entered.

  One was Arnold Besser. He was a small man, fine-boned, dark-haired, still graceful at seventy years of age. There was a flame in him that burned past the drab plainness of his features, the eerie light of fanaticism deep within his narrow skull. He nodded curtly to the greetings and stepped briskly forward. His attendant came after, a big and powerful man in chauffeur’s uniform, cat-quiet, his face rugged and expressionless.

  Only—only— Naysmith’s heart leap wildly within him. He looked away from the chauffeur-guard, up into the eyes of Arnold Besser.

  “Now, then.” The chief stood before his prisoners, hands on hips, staring impersonally at them but with a faint shiver running beneath his pale skin. “I want to know you people’s real motive in giving yourselves up. I’ve studied your ’vised dossiers, such as they are, on the way here, so you needn’t repeat the obvious. I want to know everything else.”

  “ ‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’ ” murmured Lampi. Naysmith’s mind continued the lovely words. He needed their comfort, for here was death.

  “The issues are too large and urgent for sparring,” said Besser. There was a chill in his voice as he turned to Lewin. “We have four of them here, and presumably each of them knows what the others know. So we can try four different approaches. Suggestions?”

  “Lobotomy on one,” answered the physician promptly. “We can remove that explosive detonator at the same time, of course. But it will take a few days before he can be questioned, even under the best conditions, and perhaps there has been some precaution taken so that the subject will die. We can try physical methods immediately on two of them, in the presence of each other. We had better save a fourth—just in case.”

  “Very well.” Besser’s gaze went to a white-jacketed man behind the prisoners. “You are the surgeon here. Take one away and get to work on his brain.”

  The doctor nodded and began to wheel Martinez’ chair out of the room. Lewin started a chlorine generator. The chauffeur-guard leaned against a table, watching with flat blank eyes.

  The end? Goodnight, then, world, sun and moon and wind in the heavens. Goodnight, Jeanne.

  A siren hooted. It shrilled up and down a saw-edged scale, ringing in metal and glass and human bones.

  Besser whirled toward a communicator. Wade stood heavy and paralyzed. Jennings screamed.

  The room shivered, and they heard the dull crumping of an explosion. The door opened and a man stumbled in, shouting something. His words drowned in the rising whistle and bellow of rocket missiles.

  Suddenly there was a magnum gun in the chauffeur’s hand. It spewed a rain of slugs as he crouched, swinging it around the chamber. Naysmith saw Besser’s head explode. Two of the guards had guns halfway out when the chauffeur cut them down.

  The communicator chattered up on the wall, screaming something hysterical about an air attack. The chauffeur was already across to the door switch. He closed and locked the barrier, jumped over Wade’s body, and grabbed for a surgical saw. It bit at the straps holding Naysmith, drawing a little blood. Lampi, Martinez, and Villareal were whooping aloud.

  The chauffeur spoke in rapid Brazilo-Portuguese: “I’ll get you free. Then take some weapons and be ready to fight. They may attack us in here, I don’t know. But there will be paratroops landing as soon as our air strength has reduced their defenses. We should be able to hold out till then.”

  It had worked. The incredible, desperate, precarious plan had worked. Besser, in alarm and uncertainty had gone personally to his secret headquarters. He had been piloted by his trusted gunman as usual. Only—Fourre’s office would long have known about that pilot, studied him, prepared a surgically disguised duplicate from a Brazilian Un-man and held this agent in reserve. When Christian’s message came, the chauffeur had been taken care of and the Un-man had replaced him—and had been able to slip a radio tracer into Besser’s jet—a tracer which the Rio-based U.N. police had followed.

  And now they had the base!

  Naysmith flung himself out of the chair and snatched a gun off the floor. He exchanged a glance with his rescuer, a brief warm glance of kinship and comradeship and belongingness. Even under the disguise and the carefully learned mannerisms, there had been something intangible which he had known—or was it only the fact that the deliverer had moved with such swift and certain decision?

  “Yes,” said the Brazilian unnecessarily. “I too am a Brother.”

  -14-

  There was one morning when Naysmith came out of his tent and walked down to the sea. This was in Northwest National Park, the new preserve which included a good stretch of Oregon’s coast. He had come for rest and solitude, to do some thinking which seemed to lead nowhere, and had stayed longer than he intended. There was peace here, in the great rocky stretch of land, the sandy nooks between the loneliness of ocean and the forest and mountains behind. Not many people were in the park now, and he had pitched his tent remote from the camping grounds anyway.

  It was over. The job was finished. With the records of Besser’s headquarters for clues and proof, Fourre had been in a position to expose the whole conspiracy. Nobody had cared much about the technical illegality of his raid. Several governments fell—the Chinese had a spectacularly bloody end—and were replaced with men closer to sanity. Agents had been weeded out of every regime. In America, Hessling was in jail and there was talk of disbanding Security altogether. The U.N. had a renewed prestige and power, a firmer allegiance from the peoples of the world. Happy ending?

  No. Because it was a job which never really ended. The enemy was old and strong and crafty, it took a million forms and it could never quite be slain. For it was man himself—the madness and sorrow of the human soul, the revolt of a primitive against the unnatural state called civilization and freedom. Somebody would try again. His methods would be different, he might not have the same avowed goal, but he would be the enemy and the watchers would have to break him. And who shall watch the watchmen?

  Security was a meaningless dream. There was no stability except in death. Peace and happiness were not a reward to be earned, but a state to be maintained with toil and grief.

  Naysmith’s thinking at the moment concerned personal matters. But there didn’t seem to be any answer except the one gray command: Endure.

  He crossed the beach, slipping on rocks and swearing at the chill damp wind. His plunge into the water was an icy shock which only faded with violent swimming. But when he came out, he was tingling with wakefulness.

  Romeo, he thought, toweling himself vigorously, was an ass. Psychological troubles are no excuse for losing your appetite. In fact, they should heighten the old reliable pleasures. Mercutio was the real hero of that play.

  He picked his way toward the tent, thinking of bacon and eggs. As he mounted the steep, rocky bank, he paused, scowling. A small airboat had landed next to his own. Damn! I don’t feel like being polite to anybody. But when he saw the figure which stood beside it, he broke into a run.

  Jeanne Donner waited for him, gravely as a child. When he stood before her, she met his gaze steadily, mute, and it was he who looked away.

  “How did you find me?” he whispered at last. He thought the fury of his heartbeat must soon break his ribs. “I dropped out of sight pretty thoroughly.”

  “It wasn’t easy,” she answered, smiling a little. “After the U.N. pilot took us back to the States, I pestered the life out of everyone concerned. Finally one of them forgot privacy laws and told me—I suppose on the theory that you would take care of the nuisance. I’ve been landing at every isolated spot in the park for the last two days. I knew you’d want to be alone.”

  “Rosenberg—?”

  “He agreed to accept hypno-conditioning for a nice payment—since he was sure he’d never learn the secret anyway. Now he’s forgotten that there ever was another Stefan Rostomily. I refused, of course.”

  “Well—” His voice trailed off. Finally he looked at her again and said harshly: “Yes, I’ve played a filthy trick on you. The whole Service has, I guess. Only it’s a secret which men have been killed for learning.”

  She smiled again, looking up at him with a lilting challenge in her eyes. “Go ahead,” she invited.

  His hands dropped. “No. You’ve got a right to know this. I should never have—oh, well, skip it. We aren’t complete fanatics. An organization which drew the line nowhere in reaching its aims wouldn’t be worth having around!”

  “Thank you,” she breathed.

  “Nothing to thank me for. You’ve probably guessed the basis of the secret already, if you know who Rostomily was.”

  “And what he was. Yes, I think I know. But tell me.”

  “They needed a lot of agents for the Service—agents who could meet specifications. Somebody got acquainted with Rostomily while he was still on Earth. He himself wasn’t trained, or interested in doing such work, but his heredity was wanted—the pattern of genes and chromosomes. Fourre had organized his secret research laboratories. That wasn’t hard to do, in the Years of Madness. Exogenesis of a fertilized ovum was already an accomplished fact. It was only one step further to take a few complete cells from Rostomily and use them as—as a chromosome source.

  “We Brothers, all of us, we’re completely human. Except that our hereditary pattern is derived entirely from one person instead of from two and, therefore, duplicates its prototype exactly. There are thousands of us by now, scattered around the Solar System. I’m one of the oldest. There are younger ones coming up to carry on.”

  “Exogenesis—” She couldn’t repress a slight shudder.

  “It has a bad name, yes. But that was only because of the known experiments which were performed, with their prenatal probing. Naturally that would produce psychotics. Our artificial wombs are safer and more serene even than the natural kind.”

  She nodded then, the dark wings of her hair falling past the ivory planes of her cheeks. “I understand. I see how it must be—you can tell me the details later. And I see why Fourre needed supermen. The world was too chaotic and violent—it still is—for anything less than a brotherhood of supermen.”

  “Oh—look now!”

  “No, I mean it. You aren’t the entire Service, or even a majority of it. But you’re the crack agents, the swordhand.” Suddenly she smiled, lighting up the whole universe, and gripped his arm. Her fingers were cool and slender against his flesh. “And how wonderful it is! Remember King Henry the Fifth?”

  The words whispered from him:

  And Crispin Crispian shall’ne’er go by,

  From this day to the ending of the world,

  But we in it shall be remembered,

  We few, we happy few, we band of brothers—

  After a long moment, he added wryly: “But we can’t look for fame. Not for a long time yet. The first requirement of a secret agent is secrecy, and if it were known that our kind exists half our usefulness would be gone.”

  “Oh, yes. I understand.” She stood quiet for a while. The wind blew her dress and hair about her, fluttering them against the great clean expanse of sea and forest and sky.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. Naturally, we’ll have to kill the story of a wanted murderer answering our description. That won’t be hard. We’ll announce his death resisting arrest, and after that—well, people forget. In a year or two the memory will be gone. But of course several of us, myself included, will need new identities, have to move to new homes. I’ve been thinking of New Zealand.”

  “And it will go on. Your work will go on. Aren’t you ever lonely?”

  He nodded, then tried to grin. “But let’s not go on a crying jag. Come on and have breakfast with me. I’m a helluva good egg frier.”

  “No, wait.” She drew him back and made him face her. “Tell me— I want the truth now. You said the last time, that you loved me. Was that true?”

  “Yes,” he said steadily. “But it doesn’t matter. I was unusually vulnerable. I’d always been the cat who walks by himself, more so even than most of my Brothers. I’ll get over it.”

  “Maybe I don’t want you to get over it,” she said.

  He stood without motion for a thunderous century. A sea gull went crying overhead.

  “You are Martin,” she told him. “You aren’t the same, not quite, but you’re still Martin with another past. And Jimmy needs a father, and I need you.”

  He couldn’t find words, but they weren’t called for anyway.

  Wings of Victory

  Our part in the Grand Survey had taken us out beyond the great suns Alpha and Beta Crucis. From Earth we would have been in the constellation Lupus. But Earth was 278 light-years remote, Sol itself long dwindled to invisibility, and stars drew strange pictures across the dark.

  After three years we were weary and had suffered losses. Oh, the wonder wasn’t gone. How could it ever go—from world after world after world? But we had seen so many, and of those we had walked on, some were beautiful and some were terrible and most were both—even as Earth is—and none were alike and all were mysterious. They blurred together in our minds.

  It was still a heart-speeding thing to find another sentient race, actually more than to find another planet colonizable by man. Now Ali Hamid had perished of a poisonous bite a year back, and Manuel Gonsalves had not yet recovered from the skull fracture inflicted by the club of an excited being at our last stop. This made Vaughn Webner our chief xenologist, from whom was to issue trouble.

  Not that he, or any of us, wanted it. You learn to gang warily, in a universe not especially designed for you, or you die; there is no third choice. We approached this latest star because every G-type dwarf beckoned us. But we did not establish orbit around its most terrestroid attendant until neutrino analysis had verified that nobody in the system employed atomic energy. And we exhausted every potentiality of our instruments before we sent down our first robot probe.

  The sun was a G9, golden in hue, luminosity half of Sol’s. The world which interested us was close enough in to get about the same irradiation as Earth. It was smaller, surface gravity 0.75, with a thinner and drier atmosphere. However, that air was perfectly breathable by humans, and bodies of water existed which could be called modest oceans. The globe was very lovely where it turned against star-crowded night, blue, tawny, rusty-brown, white-clouded. Two little moons skipped in escort.