The guards didn’t get another chance to fire. Omega had developed Mark’s hypnotic ability to the nth degree — to a far greater power than could possibly have been developed in the lifetime of a normal human. Furthermore Omega had wanted Mark to use that ability, saying if he didn’t keep in practice, he’d never get ahead. And Mark, at last, had decided to forget his outmoded ideas about fair play. After all you wouldn’t hesitate to use a gun on a savage who was attacking you, even if he did have only a club, Mark reasoned. So he eyed the guards firmly.
Mark descended to the ground before them. He looked deeply into the eyes of one of the rigid soldiers, and made a vigorous effort to probe his brain. Nothing. Mark frowned and tried the other. Nothing there either. Mark was both annoyed and baffled. It was his first attempt at this sort of thing, and it took him quite a while to establish the necessary contact with the sleeping brain. When he finally did, it all came in a rush; and Mark was really surprised at what he found.
“Nasty,” he said. “Very nasty indeed.”
FOR the deeper he probed into the man’s brain the more astonished he became. The man’s training had been of the best. His morals were good and his ideals were admirable. He knew and practiced the golden rule as much as a human being can and stay human.
Yet he firmly believed that it was noble to go out and slaughter any chance person who should resist the spread of Detroit’s magnificent civilization. Furthermore he could see no wrong in instantly shooting anybody who happened to come into the enclosure which surrounded the palace. For such had been the orders of Vargo, Giver of Life.
He was to ask no questions, just shoot on sight anybody who tried to get in, except at certain specified hours. The fact that Vargo had ordered it, made it a sublime duty, and not subject to rationalization.
There were other beliefs locked in that brain which were totally at variance with the man’s basic character. Mark saw the answer, even though the man had no conscious knowledge of why he reacted the way he did. Vargo was the hypnotist who had planted those pernicious ideas. And Mark suddenly realized what Omega had discovered. He knew now why the people of Detroit were so satisfied with Vargo and his reign. They had all been hypnotized!
Mark shuddered inwardly. Now he knew what was in the back of Dodd’s mind when he claimed that the old men were the only sane ones in the city. They had been well along in years when Vargo had started his campaign, and possibly because they lacked usefulness, had escaped Vargo’s eye. And Dodd probably suspected the truth.
“Oh, nasty,” Mark said again, genuinely shocked.
With the realization of what had been going on, Mark saw the wisdom of Omega’s stand on hypnotism. If everyone developed and used his latent power in this direction, a man like Vargo would never be able to get away with it. For a hypnotist can do nothing against a strongly opposing will. And the will is like the muscles — it must be developed and trained. Vargo was a mental muscleman, a gangster of the brain, a freak intellectual giant. And unfortunately Vargo was a freak in other ways. He was an ego-maniac who had no respect for others, thinking only of satisfying his own personal passion for power.
Vargo, he decided, would take a spot of looking into. “Take me to Vargo!” he commanded the two soldiers.
Chapter 8: Vargo says, “Thumbs Down!”
THEY obediently fell into step beside him as he floated through the doorway. Once inside, Mark let them precede him. They crossed a garishly decorated reception hall and stopped before two bronze doors set in an archway. And Mark knew why.
A post-hypnotic suggestion of Vargo’s was working, forbidding them to enter. Mark erased the suggestion and the men pushed the doors open. Evidently Vargo had considered it unnecessary to protect himself with locked doors. He had adequate protection planted in the minds of those about him. But he hadn’t foreseen a more powerful mind than his countermanding his orders.
To Mark, who had spent the last twelve years in the frugal surroundings of the Vikings, the room which he entered was awe-inspiring. High and domed with varicolored glass it was of dimensions to stagger the imagination.
The floor was of marble tile arranged in intricate designs. In the exact center of the room was a raised dais, surrounded by a curved wall of thick glass. Behind the glass were six chairs, apparently cast of solid gold, and beautifully chased. Seated in the chairs were six men as gaudily clothed as a technicolor version of Roman sybarites.
Mark, wincing a little, nevertheless advanced as calmly as if he had spent his whole life in just such a place as this. He reminded himself that he had come to impress, not to be impressed.
The six men noted his presence at once and turned to face him. They also were obviously determined not to be surprised. But the man in the largest and centermost of the chairs, seemed to be suffering from another emotion. His lined and evil countenance showed plainly that he was livid with rage. And no wonder, Mark reflected. Here Mark was — a forbidden intruder, ushered in by two of Vargo’s own guards, both of whom should have found it impossible to enter this chamber, let alone to bring along a friend, and one who was floating through the air at that.
Vargo’s rage subsided suddenly, and was replaced by a vague fear.
Mark stopped at the edge of the glass enclosure and turned to the soldiers. “Resume your posts and forget that you ever saw me. When you get to the outside door your minds will be free.” He realized he was sounding like a road company of Frankenstein, but it couldn’t be helped.
The guards obeyed, closed the bronze doors as they left the chamber. Six men scowled at him through the glass as Mark faced them. Vargo fought down his apprehension and returned to normal, and Vargo’s normal was something to behold.
“Who are you?” he roared, his face darkened in rage.
“I’ll be right with you.” Mark grinned charmingly, and rose in the air, passing over the glass barrier. He descended, facing the six seated men. For a moment, at the top of his rise, he hadn’t been quite sure he’d get down again, but he negotiated the descent successfully. Even with a certain distinction.
“You’re Vargo, I suppose,” he said to the oldest of the six.
“Vargo, Giver of Life! And bow when you speak to me!”
Mark laughed. “Don’t,” he said, “be stuffy. I’m Mark, Protector of the Planet, and Messenger of Omega, the Omnipotent — since we’re dealing in titles. Of course they’re homemade — like yours.”
Vargo’s rage was obviously strangling him. His face took on the purplish tinge of gradual asphyxiation. “Why are you here?” he choked.
“Omega sent me,” Mark explained. “He doesn’t seem to think highly of your system of government. Neither do I, for that matter. And neither of us likes war. So you’ll have to give up the whole idea, I’m afraid. Sorry, but there it is.”
VARGO’S rage suddenly seemed to evaporate; he became almost benign in aspect. The change set off a little alarm in Mark’s brain and sent him zooming upward just as Vargo calmly drew his gun and placed a bullet through the spot where Mark had recently been. Mark was about to descend on the old man and disarm him before he could correct his aim, but Vargo just as calmly replaced the pistol in its holster.
Mark came to rest on the floor a little closer to Vargo than he had been before. Another such attempt would find him prepared to strike back.
“Target practice?” he inquired.
“For a minute I thought...” Vargo muttered half under his breath, then answered aloud. “No protection against bullets, eh? You have to dodge.” Then suddenly the rage returned, but this time directed against his five companions. “Incompetents!” he roared. “Why haven’t you given it to me? My books say that the ancients had it. And here is a modern man with the power. Dolts!”
Mark was somewhat surprised when the five turned their scowls on Vargo. He realized that they had been scowling continuously since he first saw them. Yet as he looked at their faces he could easily see that without the scowls they would all have been fine-looking men. Intelligent
faces, too — nothing like the evil, pinched countenance of Vargo.
“The power lies within a man,” snapped one of them. “We can’t give it to you. We don’t have it ourselves.”
Abruptly Vargo turned toward Mark and drew his gun again.
Mark was capable of movement that seemed merely a blur to the eyes of the five who watched, and the edge of his hand struck the skinny wrist such a violent blow that the bone snapped. Vargo cringed in his chair, holding the wrist.
“Stop playing with that, will you?” Mark stormed, deeply annoyed.
“Kill him!” Vargo yelled. “No man can be stronger than Vargo!”
Mark stepped back a pace expecting a concerted attack from the five, but it didn’t come. In unison all five turned their heads away from Vargo.
“You forgot to make that hypnotic,” one of them reminded him.
Vargo emitted a hoarse scream of frustration, and twisted in his chair. Too late, Mark saw that Vargo had brought his left hand down on a knob in the design of the right arm of the chair. Immediately a raucous siren sounded which echoed and re-echoed from the walls of the room.
Mark felt the impact of the old man’s eyes. “You’ll kill yourself!” came his grating voice. “Pick up that gun and blow out your brains!”
So unexpected was the attack that Mark felt himself sinking. The sound of the alarm siren had thrown him off guard and Vargo’s hypnotic wave beat into his brain like a trip-hammer. A wave of darkness swept over his consciousness, and he felt himself bending over — groping for the gun!
Chapter 9: Check your Helmet Hero
THE wave became more intense as he marshaled all his strength to resist. The old man couldn’t beat him down. Omega had said that no human ever possessed as much hypnotic power as he had given Mark. But the hand still reached out gropingly.
Dimly in his ears whined the sound of the siren. Possibly it was the very urgency of the sound, or perhaps it was due to a slight weakening of Vargo’s hypnosis wave, that Mark abruptly experienced a lightening in the pall of darkness which was enveloping his mind.
The battle was won.
Mark knew it as certainly as if it were already over. For Mark’s power couldn’t wane. The same radioactive element which constantly fed his body was also refreshing his brain.
And the longer Vargo strained, the weaker he became. It was only a matter of time.
Mark’s hand ceased to grope for the gun, and he gradually straightened. Abruptly the darkness faded and he looked into the weary and beaten eyes of the aged Vargo. But was there...
There was! Mark wheeled and looked through the glass enclosure. Then he knew the reason for the faint look of triumph in Vargo’s eyes. The old man had accomplished his purpose! He had held Mark for the minute that it had taken the palace guards to converge on this room in answer to the alarm. Already doors were opening on all sides. Armed men were pouring through them.
Mark knew that now was no time to hang idly around. He would have liked to stay and lock horns once more with Vargo, but it was too late for that.
Vargo’s face was horribly distorted, both from pain and from returning rage, as Mark rose swiftly and circled within the huge glass dome overhead. The other five looked upward with mingled expressions of hope and incredulity on their faces.
Vargo pointed with his uninjured arm and screamed orders to the soldiers who were flooding the vast chamber.
To Mark, circling erratically with sudden darts and swoops, they looked like toys, so high was the dome.
Mark was getting a little nervous. What he had counted on to aid his escape wasn’t going to happen. Once more Vargo had outwitted him.
Vainly he swept his gaze from one doorway to another, but none of them was left clear of soldiers. He had headed for the dome, figuring that all the guards would congregate beneath him, in the center of the room, and try to shoot him down. That would leave the doors unguarded, and he had intended, the instant one of them was clear, to swoop over the heads of those below and make his escape.
If the plan had worked none of the men below would have been close enough for an accurate shot at his speeding form.
BUT Vargo had foreseen this move and screamed to his men to deploy in a wide-flung, curved line. Some of them he placed at each door, blocking Mark effectively. The rest, by reason of their curved formation, could shoot at Mark from all sides.
“Oh-oh,” said Mark. “What do I do now?
There was one chance, and Mark took it. Pausing momentarily, he invited a volley of shots. They came, almost before he could dart out of the way. About a hundred high-powered bullets struck within a foot of his body.
Chips of green glass rained down into the enclosed circle he had recently quitted. The bullets, which had hit the glass directly, went clear through the thick dome. Shafts of golden sunlight came through the holes.
Occasional bullets struck near Mark’s darting figure, but the men below were evidently having trouble focusing on him, with a background of vivid, ever-changing colors to dazzle their eyes.
The glass was set in squares about two feet across, and made a very pretty pattern, but to follow Mark’s movements the guards’ eyes were forced to shift from one color to another so quickly that the result was a blur which made him practically invisible. Except when he changed direction abruptly, causing a slight pause which gave them an instant in which to fire at him. At these times a lethal hail would surround him.
Apparently none of them noticed that he seemed to pause several times at one particular spot.
Vargo and his five, companions were too busy protecting themselves from the falling glass to notice anything. Vargo, Mark noted in passing, had a very fair vocabulary. With the fifth volley, a great light descended upon them all — informative as well as illuminating. With it came the fragments of the green square. It had parted company from the surrounding squares.
Vargo screamed futilely as he realized what had happened. An echoing yell went up from the soldiers, who briefly saw Mark catapult through the opening he had trapped them into creating. “Thanks, boys,” he shouted, as he passed through.
MARK was inwardly raging as he sped away from the palace. He had certainly not distinguished himself. Instead of palavering with Vargo he should have immediately subjected him to a dose of hypnosis. He could have placed suggestions in his mind which would have led to better government in the city of Detroit, and the abandonment of the war plans. He could have erased all memory of the intended plans, or better still have placed an active remorse in the old man’s mind which would have caused him to exert all his energy toward correcting his mistakes.
That would have been the simplest solution to the whole problem, for it wouldn’t have changed the status quo in the least. Any alternate method promised to bring an upheaval which would wreck the city’s social and economic system.
Mark cursed himself for the stupidity that had prevented him from thinking of all that sooner. He hoped Omega wasn’t in the offing. His last words had been to beware of Vargo. And a little before that, he had dwelt upon the advisability of using every weapon Mark had against an enemy, on the grounds that to do otherwise would prolong the battle.
If Mark had doubted the wisdom of such a procedure, he had ample proof of it now. A battle which might have now been won, was only started.
But Mark had one consolation. He had learned something from his enemy. He knew that Vargo was the hypnotist who had enslaved the population of Detroit. Before, he had only guessed, with the reservation that perhaps one of the Ancestors had been the guilty man. He also knew now that the Ancestors were ordinary men, technicians perhaps, but nothing more. And he half guessed that maybe they weren’t entirely in love with the old devil.
From what he had seen and heard, he had deduced that the Ancestors were more or less free mentalities. And it had appeared that they bucked Vargo’s will at every opportunity.
Their refusal to shoot him had indicated that. But Vargo didn’t seem the type to put up with suc
h opposition as a regular thing. There might have been an altercation before he arrived, and the Ancestors might have been sulky as a result of it.
Mark couldn’t forget that Dodd had said that they had part in planning the conquest of the world. Though Dodd, of course, was an old man, full of prejudices and not in possession of all the facts.
Mark’s own impression of the Ancestors had been favorable. But that was a problem to be solved later, and perhaps turned to useful account.
Considering everything, he had made a very poor showing. Now Vargo would be on guard. He would surround himself with a guard that Mark wouldn’t be able to penetrate. Mark wouldn’t get another chance to use his hypnotic ability. That was certain.
Mark’s anger and sense of frustration evaporated slowly, though steadily, as he began to revel in the novel exhilaration of sailing through the air under his own power. This was, without doubt, a distinctly superior means of travel.
Mark could sense all about him the waves of raw energy. It was like moving in a world of liquid — a liquid which offered no resistance to his passage, but instead bore him with resistless force at his slightest whim. A mere thought was all that was needed to direct this force.
As he moved, tentatively changing direction from time to time, he became aware of some of the mechanics of the phenomenon. When he directed his body to move in any certain direction, the waves seemed to bunch behind him, shoving him along at a speed commensurate with the intensity of his mental desire for motion.
Yet there was no feeling of pressure, for the liquid texture of the waves in front of him diminished in proportion to the increase in the opposite direction. When he desired to stop, however abruptly — and he had been pretty sudden about his stops inside the palace dome — the waves bunched up in the direction he had been traveling, effectively halting his flight. Yet there was no body-wrenching jolt, no dizzying rush of blood. It seemed as if the waves were acting equally upon every particle of his body, nullifying the inertia of his motion.
The Best of Argosy #7 - Minions of Mercury Page 6
