Chapter 19
"Oh!" the Leader said triumphantly as he saw George Hanlon's start ofsurprise. "I see you recognize our guest."
"Sure I know him," Hanlon snapped, rigidly forcing himself into control."That's Abrams. I thought I killed him."
"Ah, now, did you so?" Again the Leader smiled, but this time grimly."Now we come to the meat of the matter. You say you thought you killedhim, but you know you didn't. Your pretended assassination in such aclever manner was all a ruse--you didn't poison him at all. You merelypretended to put something in his cup."
"That's a lie. Maybe it didn't work on him, but I did ..."
"Sorry, Mr. Hanlon," the trembling Abrams whined the interruption. "Iwas forced to tell the whole story to His Highness after he found outwhere I was hiding."
His Highness!
So this was the fabulous monster of whom everyone was so afraid.Hanlon's heart sank to his knees. What chance did he have now? He wouldnever get out of this alive, nor get his report to the Corps.
"Yes, Mr. Hanlon," that silky voice mimicked meaningly, and venomously."We have ... uh ... ways of making people talk. This Abrams, like afool, was not content to continue working as my secretary. He had to getfoolish notions of ethics and patriotism, and try to ... uh ... objectto some of my policies. Why did you let him think you were still aCorpsman ... if you're not?" he snapped suddenly.
Hanlon made himself stare back insolently. Maybe they would killhim ... no, be honest, undoubtedly they would ... but by the Shade ofSnyder they weren't going to make him show the fear he felt.
"Use your head, Pal. I had to make an impression on Panek so he'dintroduce me to someone here on Sime who'd show me how to make somefast, big money, which is all I'm after," he retorted with a bravado hecertainly didn't feel, but which he hoped would make them think he did."When I found Panek was going to bump off Abrams, I horned in on it. Andwhat easier way to make Abrams play ball with me--I had nothing againsthim, and didn't want to really kill him--than to let him think I wasstill a Corpsman, after he'd seen me when I was still a cadet. I didn'tknow he'd turn yellow and squeal."
He looked contemptuously at Abrams, then turned back to the leader andmade his voice very earnest, very emphatic. "But I've told you thetruth! I am not still connected with that rotten outfit, and you'rewrong if you think I am!"
"Don't lie to His Highness!" Panek interjected. "He don't like to belied to--he don't like it."
"Aw shut up and keep out of this, small fry!" Hanlon sneered, and wasrewarded with a hard blow on the side of his head that made him wince.But His Highness intervened.
"That will do, Panek. I'll handle this. Now, Hanlon, I think you hadbetter do some very serious thinking. You can see why we are stillskeptical of you. Everything points against you ... uh ... except yourown word, and the fact that you so apparently did work hard and for ourbest interests at the mine. That point, I readily grant you, is verymuch in your favor. I am being very patient with you because, if you aretelling the truth, you can be a very valuable man to me. You do havereal ability, and other assets. But if you are not wholly for us, youare distinctly in our way."
"I tell you ..."
"Don't interrupt, please. I might inform you that I sent you to theother planet both to test you and to keep you out of the way while weinvestigated further and I could reach a decision. You were not supposedto come back yet. I sent Philander a letter to that effect, but hespace-radioed you were already on the way back when he read it."
A light dawned on Hanlon as memory skipped back to that take-off.Philander had merely stuck the mail in his pocket when it was given him,and evidently started reading it on his way back to the mine. Thatexplained his running back, waving a letter and trying to attractattention just at blast-off.
That small part of his mind that was paying attention to the men in theroom heard His Highness say "take Abrams away. He ... uh ... is of nofurther use to us. And wait outside until I call--all of you."
When they had gone His Highness leaned forward, and Hanlon knew he hadbetter pay strict attention and keep his wits about him for any openingto improve his perilous position.
"I'll speak more frankly, now that we are alone, Hanlon. I am impressedwith you. I think you have ... uh ... tremendous abilities, and I wantyou on my side. But I have to be sure. I would advise you, for your owngood, to be honest and frank with me."
"I am being, but you won't believe me," Hanlon said earnestly. "When Itake a man's pay, sir, I give him everything I've got. You gave me achance at the kind of money I want to make, and I'm doing everything Ican to earn both the money and your trust. I was kicked out of theCorps, and I'll do _anything_ I can to get even!"
"As I said before, we have ... uh ... ways of making you tell us thetruth," the Leader continued as though Hanlon had not interrupted, "butyou would not be any good either to us or the Corps or yourself if wehave to use ... uh ... persuasion. I don't want to see you broken. Youmay remember you once asked me if I could 'dish it out'? Let me assureyou that I can."
"But how can I prove anything when you've already made up your mind notto believe me?" Hanlon asked plaintively. "I'm doing my best to make youbelieve. I'll admit some of those points you've brought up could lookfishy if viewed from one standpoint, but I assure you you're putting thewrong interpretation on them. If you'll look at them from my viewpointyou'll see they are just as true."
His Highness regarded Hanlon silently but with a steady concentrationfor some minutes. "That might be true. I had about begun to believe youwhen we found Abrams, and when we questioned him he ... uh ... admittedwhat you had done, and why. That revived my doubts. Are you willing tobe tested under a truth drug?"
Hanlon almost gasped in dismay, but stifled it. He knew only too wellthe efficacy of modern truth drugs. They would reveal every thought andbit of knowledge he had ever had--all about the Corps, the SecretService and everything.
That hurt look came back into his face. "You sure are asking a lot,sir," he said. "I haven't anything to conceal from you, but no man likesto have his whole mind invaded that way--all his private thoughts andfeelings. I don't see why you need suggest such a thing. I've told youthe truth on matters you want to know about."
"You appear to have done so, and I honestly want to believe you. For yousee, Hanlon, I want you with me. You're my kind of a man. I like youbecause you have tremendous drive and imagination and ability--yes,and perhaps a bit because you're the only man I've ever met whowasn't ... uh ... afraid of me. I have tremendous plans for thefuture--and I would like to have you as my chief aide in them. I wouldtrain you as you've never guessed it possible for a man to be trained.And then, _together, Hanlon, we could rule the Universe_!"
But George Hanlon was only half-listening, even to that last, thatshocking, that totally unexpected proposition, his real goal. Here wasthe plot he had been seeking, the plot the Corps needed so desperatelyto know. Yet his personal crisis was, for the moment, more important ifhe was ever to be of any further benefit to the Secret Service or theCorps. To use his just-discovered knowledge, something else must comefirst.
His mind, therefore, was seeking a way out. He well knew that once thetruth drug was administered--and this Highness would not now besatisfied with anything less--he was as good as dead. They would findout the truth in minutes, and then would have no other recourse but tokill him.
His spirits sank to nadir with the knowledge that he hadfailed ... failed the Secret Service and the Corps, failed his father,failed the Guddus, failed himself. Curiously, perhaps, at that momentthe thought of failure was far more important to him than the imminenceof death, as such.
He had half-consciously noticed when he first glanced about this room,that there was a small ventilator near the ceiling in one corner.Desperately he pushed his mind through it, and could sense that itopened onto a park-like place, probably around one of the city'spalaces.
Hanlon finally heard His Highness call, "Panek, you and the others bringme the hypodermic. We'll have to give him th
e truth serum. I'm sorry,Hanlon," he addressed himself now to the young man, "but this is theonly way. I hope we won't have to use enough to harm you, but thatdepends on your co-operation. If you will tell us the truth quickly andwillingly I can, as I said ... uh ... use you, and you will profitgreatly by it."
Hanlon didn't struggle when they bound him firmly in the chair withmanacles on hands and feet. He knew it would be useless anyway. He lethis body slump into his chair, and again directed his mind through thatvent. He must not let them defeat him! He had to survive--to getword--to the Corps!
Then his searching mind contacted another--a weak, primitive one, but amind. Avidly he fastened onto it, merged with it ... and found himselfinside the brain of one of those Simonidean pigeons.
Ah! This is wonderful! Pigeons seldom fly alone. Where you find one youalmost always find a number. Activating the bird's brain he sent out acall to others of its kind that it had found food in abundance. Soonmore and more of them flew down to where the now enslaved pigeon wasstanding, and as each one came, Hanlon sent into its brain all of hismind it would hold.
Inside the cellar room His Highness rose and stepped up to Hanlon'sbody, the hypodermic in his hand. "Remove his coat and roll up hissleeve," he directed Panek, and the small part of Hanlon's mind stillremaining in his body felt the latter doing so, and an instant later,the prick of the needle.
Slowly at first, then with increasing swiftness he felt his remainingmind growing numb and his will weaken. His body slumped against therestraining manacles.
"Can you hear me, George Hanlon?" he dimly heard His Highness' voice.
"Yes." It sounded like a whisper.
"Are you a member of the Inter-Stellar Corps?"
"I ... I ...", he struggled not to answer.
"Tell me!"
"I ... I ..." and then, in a last desperate effort to keep from tellingwhat he must not tell, George Hanlon did a thing he had never daredattempt before. He sent all the remaining parts of his mind into thelast of the pigeons.
One of the first birds he had already sent into the ventilator so hecould look through it into the room below. He got it there just in timeto hear the Leader's gasp of dismay as he saw Hanlon's body slump stillfurther in apparent lifelessness.
"Is he dead, Boss, is he?" he heard Panek's anxious cry.
His Highness felt the pulse in Hanlon's wrist and the one in his throat."No, he's still alive."
The man stood there in deep thought, his forehead creased with a frownof concentration. "There's something peculiarly wrong here," the Leaderfinally said aloud. "Something very wrong and very strange. This isn'tan ordinary fainting spell. It's ... uh ... beyond my previousexperience."
He straightened and addressed Hanlon's body once more. "Can you stillhear me, George Hanlon?"
There was no answer, no slightest indication that his words were heard.He reached forward and lifted the body into a more upright position inthe chair. "Answer me, George Hanlon. Do you hear me? I command you totell me, are you a Corpsman?"
Still no answer, no twitch of muscle, no movement of awareness. He shookthe body a little, and raised his voice still more.
"I demand an answer, George Hanlon! The truth drug must make you speak!"
But only silence, and when he let go of the body it fell backward intothe chair, and the head lolled forward as though the neck was broken.
"Let me work on him, Boss," Panek pleaded. "Let me give him a goingover, let me."
Barely waiting to see that His Highness did not forbid it, the thugraised a short, ugly piece of rubber hose, and struck the unresistingbody again and again--across the face, over the top and back of thehead, vicious blows at the ribs and even in the groin.
But he might as well have been pounding a sack of meal. The body saggedbeneath the blows, and became bloody and discolored, but no movement--noconscious movement--did it make.
"That will do, Panek," His Highness finally commanded. "Thatdoes no good. This I cannot understand, but I do know thereis ... uh ... something most peculiar here. It is almost asthough ...", he paused and frowned again. "But that is ridiculous!"
"What's ridiculous, Boss, what is?"
"It is almost as though there was ... uh ... no mind left in the body,"His Highness said slowly. Then, abruptly, "Are you sure that wastruth-serum in that hypodermic?"
"You fixed it yourself, Boss."
His Highness wheeled suddenly, rudely awakened from his thinking by theloud _shoo_-ing noise one of the guards was making. He was astonished tosee the man making vain motions toward a pigeon whose head was stickingthrough, the ventilator vanes.
But the bird didn't leave.
"Stop it!" the Leader commanded impatiently. "We've more import ..."
He checked himself, and turned back to stare wonderingly at the bird,which peered back at him with apparently unfrightened, beady eyes,turning its head to first one side and then the other, as though betterto see all that was going on.
"That's peculiar," His Highness said thoughtfully. "I never saw a birdact like that before. Hmmm, I wonder?... But no, that's absurd."
He turned back to Hanlon's body as though disgusted with himself forentertaining such a fantastic notion. Hands behind his back, that scowlof concentration engraving deep lines on his face, the Leader pacedforth and back across the floor of the little room, his glance ever andagain returning to stare in exasperation at that slumped-over,dead-but-alive body.
Who was this amazing young man? What sort of talents and abilities didhe possess, that he could react thus to a truth-serum? Had he been sotreated by the Corps experts that his mind would be blanked out in suchemergencies? Was he some kind of a mutant with powers never beforeknown? Or--startling thought--was he actually a human being at all?
Better than anyone else, His Highness could appreciate the fact that theuniverse contained many types of sentient and highly mental life otherthan those originating on Terra. Since he had come here to Simonides,and had wormed his way into the very highest position beneath itsemperor--a weak old man he had had no trouble dominating--he wasnaturally suspicious of anyone who might be attempting to discover andwreck his carefully-laid plans.
Such a one, he was now convinced, was this young Hanlon. It would be thesimplest thing to kill this almost-dead body now, but that would notsolve this baffling problem. If Hanlon, perhaps others of the Corps hadsimilar powers. No, one with such abilities must not be killed. He mustbe kept and studied, and the secret learned if possible.
But his thoughts were interrupted by Panek. "That fool bird's stillthere, still there. Is it another of your pets, Boss?"
His Highness wheeled. He had forgotten the bird. Was it possible thatHanlon had, in some inexplicable manner, transferred ... on the surfaceit was an absurd concept. But, there were magicians on his home planetwho could do things almost as unfathomable.
He suddenly made up his mind. "Kill it!" he commanded.
Whatever else he was or was not, Panek was fast with a gun. The wordswere hardly spoken when he had drawn and fired.
Man of Many Minds Page 19
