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and are therefore able to do many seemingly miraculous things, which real
humanity refuses to do because of the lack of dignity involved. But there are
no Aliens. Aliens are a Primey myth."
Hebster grunted. "That is the ideal way of facing an unpleasant fact. Stare
right through it."
"If you insist on talking about such illusions as Aliens," the rustling and
angry voice cut in, "I'm afraid we can't continue the conversation. You're
evidently going Prime, Hebster."
The line went dead.
Hebster scraped a finger inside the mouthpiece rim. "He believes his own
stuff." he said in an awed voice. "For all of the decadent urbanity, he has to
have the same reassurance he gives his followers the horrible, superior thing
just isn't there!"
Greta Seidenheim was waiting at the door with his briefcase and both their
coats. As he came away from the desk, he said, "I won't tell you not to come
along, Greta, but "
"Good," she said, swinging along behind him. "Think we'll make it to wherever
we're going?"
"Arizona. The first and largest Alien settlement. The place our friends with
the funny names come from."
"What can you do there that you can't do here?"
"Frankly, Greta, I don't know. But it's a good idea to lose myself for a
while. Then again, I want to get in the area where all this agony originates
and take a close look; I'm an off-the-cuff businessman; I've done all of my
important figuring on the spot."
There was bad news waiting for them outside the helicopter. "Mr. Hebster," the
pilot told him tonelessly while cracking a dry stick of gum, "the stratojet's
been seized by the SIC. Are we still going? If we do it in this thing, it
won't be very far or very fast."
"We're still going," Hebster said after a moment's hesitation.
They climbed in. The two Primeys sat on the floor in the rear, sneezing
conversa-tionally at each other. Williams waved respectfully at his boss.
"Gentle as lambs," he said. "In fact, they made one. I had to throw it out."
The large pot-bellied craft climbed up its rope of air and started forward
from the Hebster Building.
"There must have been a leak," Greta muttered angrily. "They heard about the
dead Primey. Somewhere in the organization there's a leak that I haven't been
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able to find. The SIC heard about the dead Primey and now they're hunting us
down. Real efficient, I am!"
Hebster smiled at her grimly. She was very efficient. So was Personnel and a
dozen other subdivisions of the organization. So was Hebster himself. But
these were func-tioning members of a normal business designed for stable
times. Political spies! If Dempsey could have spies and saboteurs all over
Hebster Securities, why couldn't Braganza? They'd catch him before he had even
started running; they'd bring him back before he could find a loophole.
They'd bring him back for trial, perhaps, for what in all probability would be
known to history as the Bloody Hebster Incident. The incident that had
precipitated a world revolution.
"Mr. Hebster, they're getting restless," Williams called out. "Should I relax
'em out, kind of?"
Hebster sat up sharply, hopefully. "No," he said. "Leave them alone!" He
watched the suddenly agitated Primeys very closely. This was the odd chance
for which he'd brought them along! Years of haggling with Primeys had taught
him a lot about them. They were good for other things than sheer
gimmick-craft.
Two specks appeared on the windows. They enlarged sleekly into jets with SIC
insignia.
"Pilot!" Hebster called, his eyes on Larry, who was pulling painfully at his
beard. "Get away from the controls! Fast! Did you hear me? That was an order!
Get away from those controls!"
The man moved off reluctantly. He was barely in time. The control board
dis-solved into rattling purple shards behind him. The vanes of the gyro
seemed to flower into indigo saxophones. Their ears rang with supersonic
frequencies as they rose above the jets on a spout of unimaginable force.
Five seconds later they were in Arizona.
They piled out of their weird craft into a sage-cluttered desert.
"I don't ever want to know what my windmill was turned into," the pilot
com-mented, "or what was used to push it along but how did the Primey come to
under-stand the cops were after us?"
"I don't think he knew that," Hebster explained, "but he was sensitive enough
to know he was going home, and that somehow those jets were there to prevent
it. And so he functioned, in terms of his interests, in what was almost a
human fashion. He protected himself."
"Going home " Larry said. He'd been listening very closely to Hebster,
dribbling from the right-hand corner of his mouth as he listened. "Haemostat,
hammersdarts, hump. Home is where the hate is. Hit is where the hump is. Home
and locks the door."
S.S. Lusitania had started on one leg and favored them with her peculiar
fleshy smile. "Hindsight," she suggested archly, "is no more than home site.
Gabble, honk?"
Larry started after her, some three feet off the ground. He walked the air
slowly and painfully as if the road he traveled were covered with numerous
small boulders, all of them pitilessly sharp.
"Goodbye, people," Hebster said. "I'm off to see the wizard with my friends in
greasy gray here. Remember, when the SIC catches up to your unusual
vessel stay close to it for that purpose, by the way it might be wise to refer
to me as someone who forced you into this. You can tell them I've gone into
the wilderness looking for a solution, figuring that if I went Prime I'd still
be better off than as a punching bag whose own-ership is being hotly disputed
by such characters as P. Braganza and Vandermeer Dempsey. I'll be back with my
mind or on it."
He patted Greta's cheek on the wet spot; then he walked deftly away in pursuit
of S.S. Lusitania and Larry. He glanced back once and smiled as he saw them
looking curiously forlorn, especially Williams, the chunky young man who
earned his living by guarding other people's bodies. The Primeys followed a
route of sorts, but it seemed to have been designed by some-one bemused by the
motions of an accordion. Again and again it doubled back upon itself, folded
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across itself, went back a hundred yards and started all over again.
This was Primey country Arizona, where the first and largest Alien settlement
had been made. There were mighty few humans in this corner of the southwest
any more just the Aliens and their coolies.
"Larry," Hebster called as an uncomfortable thought struck him. "Larry!
Do...do your masters know I'm coming?"
Missing his step as he looked up at Hebster's peremptory question, the Primey
tripped and plunged to the ground. He rose, grimaced at Hebster and shook his
head. "You are not a businessman," he said. "Here there can be no business.
Here there can be only humorous what-you-might-call-worship. The movement to
the universal, the inner nature The realization, complete and eternal, of the
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