I had some of their power all right. I could feel it, and it was like a new kind of Martian rotgut was giving me a crazy highness. I felt like I'd suddenly gone screwy, but didn't care—as though nobody could touch me for it. I had some of their power, whoever or whatever they were, but not very much I thought; just enough to help me kill Ronal LeStrang.
A tele-audio flash information band on the side of the building shocked me as I stared at it. It gave the date. September 6, 1983.
Since Malcolm Mergon had walked toward me saying "Ray, go back to sleep," it had been three weeks! I'd been out three weeks. It jolted me. Three weeks. Work on my brain; work on my body; do things to my nervous set-up; make me different. This Glora and Malcolm Mergon—I knew they could do an awful lot to a guy in three weeks.
I stumbled a little, ran into a cute little blonde. She glared at me then looked scared. I felt her thoughts, felt hundreds, thousands of thoughts that belonged to the pedestrians around me, swarming and beating at my head like moths at a light. "He's a drunk! ... looks like one of those non-rehabilitated space men ... see the cosmic-ray burns on his face ... stay away from him ... dangerous...."
Dangerous, sure. They'd done plenty to me, but I didn't know what nor how much. And I didn't even know why ... not for sure; just what they'd told me to believe. But I remembered—dangerous—I was supposed to kill.
A piece of uncultured, ignorant, un-psyched space-rot! Picked up and brought to Earth to do a murder job. They got me, Ray Berton, killer. But that wasn't enough for them, oh no. They had to give me added abilities—make me a super-delux killer!
Me, Ray Berton. The guy who would save the world!
I took a grav-raise tube up the building front to the top of the big central UN Building in International Square. I stepped into a scanning cubicle. A mechanical voice said: "State the purpose of your visit, please."
I stared around me at the mosaicked floors and walls. A super-super delux killer. And with one of the most important men in the world to kill. I knew that, through Glora and Malcolm, I'd made an appointment. Made it sound important.