The Night Shapes by James Blish

Author:James Blish
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Sff
ISBN: 9780380646753
Publisher: Avon Books
Published: 1978-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was a crisis. And a bad one. There was no doubt about that. A time for quick thinking, if ever there was one. I cared nothing about what happened to Cobham. That callous devil could have been whisked to Hell without my turning a hair. But I, myself, was in the gravest danger of sharing his fate. If Satan thought that I had deliberately drawn his confidences he would waste no time asking for explanations. The fact that I had not accepted his word would in itself call for my punishment.

Worst of all, I had caught him lying to me. He might decide that would render me useless to him thereafter. But that was secondary. The paramount thing was that it made him, as the Chinese say, “lose face.” If his ancestry was what Barker believed, that was the one unforgivable affront. Whether it was or was not, I knew that Satan’s infernal intellect was clothed with as infernal a pride. And that pride had been wounded.

My only chance for escape lay in healing the wound before Satan knew that I had perceived it. I jumped to my feet and walked towards him.

“Well,” I laughed, “have I passed the test?”

Instantly he caught it. Whether, at the moment, he believed me as naive as my question implied, I could not know. Still, after all, why not? It was exactly the kind of trap, or rather experiment, he had been teaching me to expect him to conceive.

Nor did I know how long he had been listening. Had he intentionally left Cobham and me together to see what would happen? And heard all? Probably. If so there had been no single word I had spoken upon which his suspicion could feed. At any rate, to follow my lead was the only way he could maintain his pride. Save his face. He followed it.

“Cobham,” he said, “you were right.”

He turned to me.

“Tell me, James Kirkham, when did you first suspect that you were under test? I am curious to know exactly how keen that perception of yours is.”

He waved to me to be seated, and dropped into his own chair. I kept my eyes steadily averted from Cobham.

“The first thing that puzzled me, Satan,” I said, “was your attitude toward the Astarte. It would certainly not have been mine. That dead men tell no tales, is a safe and sane old rule. I would have followed your instructions— but,” I added, boldly, “I would not have approved of them.”

His eyes never left me as I spoke. I felt his will beating against mine like a hammer, endeavoring to strike out the truth.

“When did your suspicion become certainty?” he asked.

“At the moment you appeared here,” I told him.

Suddenly I let some of my anger find vent.

“I’ll stand for no more such experiments upon me, Satan,” I cried, with a cold fury that had none of its roots in the matter in hand,, but was real enough nevertheless. “Either I am to be trusted wholly, or I am not to be trusted at all.

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