Journey to Infinity - [Adventures in Science Fiction 02]

by Edited by Martin Greenburg

  Silence.

  “It is one of an association of worlds?”

  Silence.

  “It is the outpost world of another Empire?”

  Silence.

  “But that Empire is smaller than ours?”

  No response.

  “Greater than ours?”

  “Heavens, I’ve been led to believe that yours is the greatest ever,” said Harold sardonically.

  “Be quiet!” One of the young ones standing at his side gave him an irate thrust on the shoulder.

  “Or what?”

  “Or we’ll slap your ears off!”

  The bearded man, who had paused expressionlessly through this brief interlude, carried on nonchalantly.

  “Your kind are the highest form of life on your planet? There is no other intelligent life thereon? You knew of no other intelligent life anywhere previous to encountering emissaries of the Empire?”

  The questioner was in no way disturbed by his victim’s complete lack of response, and his bearing made that fact clear. Occasionally peering at the papers in his hand, but mostly favoring his listener with a cold, owlish stare, he ploughed steadily on. The questions reached one hundred, two hundred, then Harold lost count of them. Some were substitutes or alternatives for others, some made cross reference with others asked before or to be asked later, some were obvious traps. All were cogent and pointed. All met stubborn silence.

  They finished at length, and the bearded one put away his papers with the grumbling comment, “It’s going to take us all night to rationalize this lot!” He gave Harold a reproving stare. “You might just as well have talked in the first place. It would have saved us a lot of bother and gained you a lot of credit.”

  “Would it?” Harold was incredulous.

  “Take him away,” snapped the bearded man.

  One of the young men looked questioningly at the oldster, who understood the unspoken query and responded, “No, not there. Not yet, anyway. It mightn’t be necessary. Let’s see what we’ve got first.” He took off his glasses, scratched his beard. “Put him in his apartment. Give him something to eat.” He cackled gratingly. “Let the condemned man eat a hearty meal.”

  The apartment proved to be compact, well-appointed, comfortable. Three rooms: bathroom, bedroom, sitting room, the latter with a filled bookcase, a large electric radiator, sunken heating panels for extra warmth, and a magniscreen television set.

  Harold sprawled at ease in a soft, enveloping chair, watched a short-haired, burly man wheel in a generous meal. Hungry as he was, his attention didn’t turn to the food. He kept it fixed on the burly man who, unconscious of the persistent scrutiny, methodically put out the meat, bread, fruit, cakes and coffee.

  As the other finished his task, Harold said casually, “What are those lizardlike things that wear black uniforms with silver braid?”

  “Dranes.” Short-hair turned around, gazed dully at the prisoner. His face was heavy, muscular, his eyes small, his forehead low. “We calls ‘em Dranes.”

  “Yes, but what are they?”

  “Oh, just another life form, I guess. From some other planet— maybe from one called Drane. I dunno. I used to know, but I’ve forgotten.”

  “You don’t like them, eh?” suggested Harold.

  “Who does?” He frowned with the unusual strain of thought, his small eyes shrinking still smaller. “I like to have ideas of my own, see? I don’t care for any lizards reading my mind and telling the world what I’d sooner keep to myself, see ? A man wants privacy—especially sometimes.”

  “So they’re telepaths!” It was Harold’s turn to frown. “Hm-m-m!” He mused anxiously. The other began to shove his empty meal trolley toward the door, and Harold went on hurriedly, “Any of them hereabouts?”

  “No, it’s too late in the evening. And there ain’t a lot of them on this planet, thank Pete! Only a few here. They do some sort of official work, I dunno what. A couple of them got important jobs right in this dump, but they’ll be home now. Good riddance, I says!” He scowled to show his intense dislike of the mysterious Dranes. “A guy can think what he likes while they’re away.” He pushed his trolley outside, followed it and closed the door. The lock clicked quietly, ominously.

  Harold got on with his meal while he waited for angry men to come for him. Beardface and his two assistants had indicated that nothing more would be done with him before morning, but this last episode would speed things up considerably. He hastened his eating, vaguely surprised that he was getting it finished without interruption. They were less quick on the uptake than he’d anticipated. He employed the time usefully in working out a plan of campaign.

  The apartment made his problem tough. He’d already given it a thorough scrutiny, noted that its decorated walls and doors were all of heavy metal. The windows were of armorglass molded in one piece over metal frames with sturdy, closely set bars. It was more than an apartment; it was a vault.

  There was a very tiny lens cunningly concealed in the wall high up in one corner. It would have escaped discovery by anyone with lesser powers of observation. He’d found another mounted on the stem of the hour hand of the clock. It looked like a jewel. He knew it to be a scanner of some kind, and suspected that there were others yet to be found. Where there were scanners there would also be microphones, midget jobs hard to dig out when you don’t want to make a search too obvious. Oh, yes, they’d know all about his little conversation with Short-hair—and they’d be along.

  They were. The lock clicked open just as he ended his meal. Helman came in followed by a huge fellow in uniform. The latter closed the door, leaned his broad back against it, pursed his lips in a silent whistle while he studied the room with obvious boredom. Helman went to a chair, sat in it, crossed his legs, looked intently at the prisoner. A vein pulsed in his forehead and the effect of it was menacing.

  He said, “I’ve been on the televox to Roka. He swears that he’s never mentioned the Dranes in your presence. He’s positive that they’ve never been mentioned or described in your hearing by anyone on the ship. Nothing was said about them by the guards who brought you here. You’ve seen none in this building. So how d’you know about them?”

  “Mystifying, isn’t it?” commented Harold pleasantly.

  “There is only one way in which you could have found out about the Dranes,” Helman went on. “When the examiners finished with you in stage three an assistant pondered the notion of passing you along to stage four, but the idea was dropped for the time being. Stage four is operated by the Dranes.”

  “Really?” said Harold. He affected polite surprise.

  “The Dranes were never mentioned,” persisted Helman, his hard eyes fixed on his listener, “but they were thought of. You read those thoughts. You are a telepath!”

  “And you’re surprised by the obvious?”

  “It wasn’t obvious because it wasn’t expected,” Helman retorted. “On four thousand worlds there are only eleven truly telepathic life forms and not one of them human in shape. You’re the first humanoid possessing that power we’ve discovered to date.”

  “Nevertheless,” persisted Harold, “it should have been obvious. My refusal to co-operate—or my stubbornness as you insist on calling it—had good reason. I perceived all the thoughts behind your questions. I didn’t like them. I still don’t like them.”

  “Then you’ll like even less the ones I’m thinking now,” snapped Helman.

  “I don’t,” Harold agreed. “You’ve sent out a call for the Dranes, ordered them to come fast, and you think they’ll be here pretty soon. You expect them to suck me dry. You’ve great confidence in their powers even though you can’t conceive the full extent of mine.” He stood up, smiled as Helman uncrossed his legs with a look of sudden alarm. He stared into Helman’s black eyes, and his own were sparkling queerly. “I think,” he said, “that this is a good time for us to go trundle our hoops—don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Helman murmured. Clumsily he got to his feet, stood there
with an air of troubled preoccupation. “Yes, sure!”

  The guard at the door straightened up, his big hands held close to his sides. He looked inquiringly at the vacant Helman. When Helman failed to respond, he shifted his gaze to the prisoner, kept the gaze fixed while slowly the alertness faded from his own optics.

  Then, although he’d not been spoken to, he said hoarsely, “O.K., we’ll get along. We’ll get a move on.” He opened the door.

  The three filed out, the guard leading, Helman in the rear. They moved rapidly along the corridors, passing other uniformed individuals without challenge or comment until they reached the main hall. Here, the man in myrtle green, whose little office held the lever controlling the automatic doors, sat at his desk and felt disposed to be officious.

  “You can’t take him out until you’ve signed him out, stating where he’s being taken, and on whose authority,” he enunciated flatly.

  “On my authority,” said Helman. He voiced the words in stilted tones as if he were a ventriloquist’s dummy, but the officious one failed to notice it.

  “Oh, all right,” he growled. He shoved a large, heavy tome to one end of his desk. “Sign there. Name in column one, destination in column two, time of return in column three.” He looked at the huge guard who was watching dumbly, emitted a resigned sigh, inquired, “I suppose you need a car ?”

  “Yes,” said Helman mechanically.

  The official pressed a button; a sonorous gong clanged somewhere outside the building. Then he pulled his tiny lever; the great doors swung open. The trio strolled out with deceptive casualness, waited a moment while the doors closed behind them. It was fairly dark now, but not completely so, for a powdering of stars lay across the sky, and a steady glow of light emanated from the surrounding city.

  Presently a jet car swept around one end of the building, stopped before them. The three got in. Harold sat at the back between Helman and the big guard, both of whom were strangely silent, ruminative. The driver turned around, showed them a face with raised eyebrows.

  “Downtown,” uttered Helman curtly.

  The driver nodded, faced front. The car rolled toward the gates in the distant wall, reached them, but they remained closed. Two men in green emerged from the shadow of the wall, focused light beams on the vehicle’s occupants.

  One said, “Inquisitor Helman, one specimen—I guess it’s O.K.” He waved his light beam toward the gates which parted slowly and ponderously. Emitting a roar from its jets, the car swept through.

  They dropped Harold Harold-Myra in the mid-southern section of the city where buildings grew tallest and crowds swarmed thickest. Helman and the guard got out of the car, talked with him while the driver waited out of earshot.

  “You will both go home,” Harold ordered, “remembering nothing of this and behaving normally. Your forgetfulness will persist until sunrise. Until you see the sun you will be quite unable to recall anything which has occurred since you entered my room. Do you understand?”

  “We understand.”

  Obediently they got back into the car. They were a pair of automatons. He stood on the sidewalk, watched their machine merge into the swirl of traffic and disappear. The sky was quite dark now, but the street was colorful with lights that shifted and flickered and sent eccentric shadows skittering across the pavement.

  For a few minutes he stood quietly regarding the shadows and musing within himself. He was alone—alone against a world. It didn’t bother him particularly. His situation was no different from that of his own people who formed a solitary world on the edge of a great Empire. He’d one advantage which so far had stood him in good stead: he knew his own powers. His opponents were ignorant in that respect. On the other hand, he suffered the disadvantage of being equally ignorant, for although he’d learned much about the people of the Empire, he still did not know the full extent of their powers. And theirs were likely to be worthy of respect. Alliance of varied life forms with varied talents could make a formidable combination. The battle was to be one of homo superior versus homo sapiens plus the Dranes plus other things of unknown abilities—with the odds much in favor of the combine.

  Now that he was foot-loose and fancy-free he could appreciate that guard’s argument that there’s no point in being free unless one knows where to nurse one’s freedom. The guard, though, had implied something and overlooked something else. He’d implied that there were places in which freedom could be preserved, and he’d forgotten that escapees have a flair for discovering unadvertised sanctuaries. If his own kind were half as wise and a quarter as crafty as they ought to be, thought Harold, the tracing of such a sanctuary should not be difficult.

  He shrugged, turned to go, found himself confronted by a tall, thin fellow in black uniform with silver buttons and silver braid. The newcomer’s features were gaunt and tough, and they changed color from gold to blood-red as the light from a nearby electric sign flickered over it.

  Harold could hear the other’s mind murmuring, “Queer, outlandish clothes this fellow’s wearing. Evidently a recent importee—maybe a specimen on the lam!’ even as the thinker’s mouth opened and he said audibly, “Let me see your identity card!”

  “Why?” asked Harold, stalling for time. Curse the clothes-— he’d not had time to do anything about them yet.

  “It’s the regulation,” the other returned irritably. “You should know that every citizen must produce his card when called upon to do so by the police.” His eyes narrowed, his mind spoke silently but discernibly. “Ah, he hesitates. It must be that he doesn’t possess a card. This looks bad!” He took a step forward.

  Harold’s eyes flamed with an odd glow. “You don’t really want to see my card?” he said gently. “Do you?”

  The policeman had a momentary struggle with himself before he answered, “No ... no ... of course not!”

  “It was just your mistake?”

  “Just my mistake!” admitted the other slowly. His mind was now completely muddled. A random thought, “He’s dangerous!” fled wildly through the cerebral maze, pursued, outshouted and finally silenced by other, violently imposed thoughts saying, “Silly mistake. Of course he’s got a card. I interfere too much

  With shocking suddenness, another thought broke in, registering clearly and succinctly despite the telepathic hubbub of a hundred surrounding minds. “By the Blue Sun, did you catch that, Gaeta? A fragment of hypnotic projection! Something about a card. Turn the car round!”

  A cold sweat beaded on Harold’s spine, he closed his mind like a trap, sent his sharp gaze along the road. There was too great a flood of cars and too many swiftly changing lights to enable him to pick out any one vehicle turning in the distance. But he’d know that car if it came charging down upon him. Its driver might be of human shape, but its passengers would be lizardlike.

  Machines whirled past him four, five and sometimes six abreast. The eerie voice which had faded suddenly came back, waxed strong, faded away again.

  It said, “I might be wrong, of course. But I’m sure the amplitude was sufficient for hypnosis. No, it’s gone now—I can’t pick it up at all. All these people make too much of a jumble on the neural band!”

  Another thought, a new one, answered impatiently, “Oh, let it pass, you’re not on duty now. If we don’t—“ It waned to indiscernibility.

  Then the policeman’s mind came back, saying, “Well, why am I standing here like a dummy? Why was I picking on this guy? It must’ve been for something! I didn’t stop him for the fun of it—unless I’m scatty!”

  Harold said quickly and sharply, “You didn’t stop me. I stopped you. Intelligence Service—remember?”

  “Eh?” The cop opened his mouth, closed it, looked confused.

  “Wait a moment,” added Harold, a strong note of authority in his voice. He strained his perception anxiously. A river of surrounding thoughts flowed through his mind, but none with the power and clarity of the invisible Gaeta and his alert companion. Could they, too, close their minds? There wasn
’t any way of telling!

  He gave it up, returned his attention to the cop, and said, “Intelligence Service. I showed you my official warrant. Good heavens, man, have you forgotten it already?”

  “No.” The man in black was disconcerted by this unexpected aggressiveness. The reference to a nonexistent Intelligence Service warrant made his confusion worse confounded. “No,” he protested, “I haven’t forgotten.” Then, in weak effort to make some sort of a come-back. “But you started to say something, and I’m waiting to hear the rest.”

  Harold smiled, took him by the arm. “Look, I’m authorized to call upon you for assistance whenever needed. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sure, but—”

  “What I want you to do is very simple. It’s necessary that I change attire with a certain suspected individual and that he be kept out of circulation overnight. I’ll point him out to you when he comes along. You’re to tell him that you’re taking him in for interrogation. You’ll then conduct us somewhere where we can change clothes, preferably your own apartment if you’ve got one. I’ll give you further instructions when we get there.”