1965: This brilliant new SF author is ‘a discovery … Leonard Daventry has created a three-dimensional future, and has written both a subtle and alarming novel’
A select group of telepaths send ‘Keyman’ Claus Coman on a vital mission to the World Council.
Arriving at ‘The Glass City’ with Jonl and Sein, the two beautiful girls with whom he enjoys a ménage à trios, Coman finds himself the target of a criminal conspiracy.
Deadliest danger of all comes from the insidious menace of two ‘Jokers’ or telepaths of limited perception, the sadistic Harkor and the wanton, sensuous Linnel, both determined to prevent Coman from achieving his purpose.
An exciting and thought-provoking evocation of the 21st Century.
A Man of Double Deed
Leonard Daventry
Pan Books Ltd: London
Copyright
First published 1965 by Victor Gollancz Ltd.
This edition published 1967 by Pan Books Ltd.,
33 Tothill Street, London, S.W.1
Copyright © Leonard Daventry, 1965
Printed and bound in England by
Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd
Aylesbury, Bucks
Chapter I
ONE WARM OCTOBER afternoon, in the year 2090, Claus Coman could be seen disembarking from the Moon-Earth ferry, in Twelfth City, Section 7. A lean figure, of medium height and indeterminate age, with features ordinary enough, except for the disparity between his dark, hard eyes and the sensitive, sensual mouth, he wore the clothes of a civilian, and to a disinterested observer his profession or status would have been hard to define. In fact, he was a man of many parts. An ex-crewman of the Interplanetary Force based on the Moon, and a geologist trained in paleontology and mineralogy, he had for some time past allowed his work in these fields to lapse, and now gave them only scant attention. Indeed, the whole tenor of Claus Coman’s life had changed from the moment when, three years previous, he had found himself the possessor of telepathic powers.
After presenting himself to the electronic eyes at the barrier for checking and identification, Coman took an aircar to a place called Old Peckham, from where he proceeded on foot to his house, an ancient but well-preserved relic of the day before the Atomic Disaster of 1990. The fact that he preferred to live in this archaic dwelling, one of very few left in the Section, was a source of wonder to his acquaintances, and perplexity and annoyance to his neighbours in their surrounding concrete towers.
He was old-fashioned in other ways also, being content with two women only, and preferring word-books and music to the numerous and often hectic amusements of the period. He drank to moderation, smoked heavily, said little at any time, laughed hardly at all, and was capable of falling asleep anywhere, as occasion or will dictated.
When at length he stood upon the doorstep of his house, three screens within reflected the image of his face – a face made grey and tender by exposure to the vapours of Venus, and now reddening already under the arid conditions of Earth. At once a warning buzzer sounded, and the picture was seen by two young women, the elder of whom went immediately to the drawing-room and pressed the lock release, then, giving her reflection a quick glance in the long wall-mirror, seated herself in a chair facing the door. When Coman entered, both he and the woman stayed quite still, gazing in silence at each other for almost a minute, until she said softly:
‘Once more we are complete.’
He could only speak her name: ‘Jonl’, but his tone and his look brought a faint flush of pleasure to her pale, fine-boned face.
‘Be seated, while I fetch some refreshment,’ she said, walking gracefully by him through the door and into the hall.
Seconds later, the other girl entered the room. Sein, three years younger, was golden-haired, her face oval, with lips curling mischievously at the corners. She was smaller and slimmer than Jonl, less devious in thought, more extravagant in word and deed. She extended her hand now, and taking it, he touched the fingers briefly with his mouth, the faint fragrance of her body leaping at his senses like the spark of a fire. When he released the hand she brought it to her own mouth, her slate-blue eyes bright with tears. This was the way it usually was when he returned after a long absence. The three of them possessed an affinity which was reaffirmed at the moment of reunion, after which words were unnecessary to assure them of the constancy of their relationship.
Around the low table near the one window were placed three cushions, and at the sight of these Coman felt the first true sensation of release from the pain and tensions of the many worlds outside. He took off his jacket, loosened his shirt-collar and seated himself cross-legged upon the central cushion. To Sein, now seated on his right, his eyes appeared to become more obscure, the lines of his face somehow blurred. She took a metal casket from the table in front of them and, opening it, offered him a cigarette and a light, then asked quietly: ‘Do you wish to talk of it?’
Coman shrugged, inhaling the thick smoke, the poison outlawed in nearly every human community throughout the solar system.
‘Mannein, a god, was killed,’ he said, ‘and his followers are dispersing. That’s all there is to it. I was instrumental in causing his death.’
As he spoke, Jonl returned, carrying a tray, on which were the tree cups of tea they drank at reunion. She sat beside him, her eyes downcast, her full mouth set in firm lines.
‘As a keyman you have sources of information and opinion denied to ordinary people, yet can you always trust those sources?’
‘Meaning—?’ he asked.
‘Is it not possible that those sources may one day be commandeered by anti-human elements, and coloured accordingly?’
‘It is – but I should know at once. Have no doubt of that.’
The ritual – for such it was – proceeded, with questions, answers, discussions and assurances. Gradually, the sips of tea, the coolness of the dark girl, and the warmth of the blonde helped Coman to relax and absorb the deep sense of privacy and safety the house always held for him. He was able to lay aside the events of the month between going and returning and take up again the threads of his association with the two women.
At the end of the ritual, he rose and went to the bathroom, with its arrangement of robots ready to cleanse and massage his body. Shortly afterwards, wearing only a gown, he walked into the dining room, situated at the rear of the building, and stood for a while gazing out of the long windows at the walled garden. Above the walls the white tenements of his neighbours shot up to the sky, and, to prevent the over-curious from observing the affairs of the house, Coman had erected an R-screen, a suspended mist of atomised dust which, although reducing the light values, effectively distorted whatever lay beneath it.
Evening had come, and the two young women, like himself, now wore only one garment. In silence, the three of them ate the robot-prepared meal. Afterwards, over wine, they talked idly, gently, banteringly, of anything but the mounting excitement of their blood, allowing whatever remained between them to ebb away in talk of mundane matters. Jonl was still working as par-time secretary to one of the professors at The Museum of Natural History (Earth), in Twelfth City, and Sein was still looking after the house.
Coman mentioned that he had heard many rumours, on Venus, about a rise in violence among young people on Earth, and, before he could ask what truth there was in these, he saw the faces of the two women cloud over with a strange uneasiness.
‘It is a kind of madness which grows worse by the our,’ said Sein. ‘Do you remember the spate of murders committed by boys and girls in the month before you went away?’ Coman nodded, and she continued: ‘Well, that was only the beginning. Every day now things are getting worse. Young people of eighteen and nineteen killing and maimi
ng each other, their parents and even complete strangers, for no apparent reason.’
Coman frowned, then, realising how the conversation was upsetting Sein and Jonl, said: ‘Let’s forget the world outside for a while. Here we are safe, and can re-forge our own dream. Oh yes!… I have a present from Venus for you both.’
Sein clapped her hands with excitement as Coman drew from the pocket of his gown two necklaces of precious stones.
‘How lovely!’ Sein exclaimed, gazing in wonder as she took her necklace in her hands. The jewels were of a translucent green, each stone containing within it strange clouds and fires of orange and red.
Jonl sat quiet, her gaze flickering from her gift, a string of scintillating crystals of an eerie purplish colour not found in Earth’s Minerals, to the man across the table. As she sat, her hands clasped, her breasts rising and falling with the quickening of her breath, the silence was one of increasing expectancy. The younger woman’s eyes were also fixed upon his, her cheeks flushed, her lips slightly parted. Suddenly Coman’s lean fingers, tightened round the empty wineglass in his hand, snapped its stem in two. Placing the pieces carefully on an empty plate, he said softly: ‘We are wasting time.’
It was ten o’clock before he awoke, finding the filtered sun upon his eyelids and fresh tea at his elbow. After a while he rose, bathed and went down to breakfast. He learnt from the recording device in the hall that Jonl had had to attend a meeting at the Museum but would return at noon, and that Sein had also gone out, on business connected with the house.
While he was eating he turned on local and then world news, idly watching the pictures flooding across the west wall of the roof. For the second time during the last twelve hours someone thoughtcalled his name, but he ignored it and concentrated his attention on the news commentary. There were now ten murders and fifteen suicides occurring every minute in the City. Plans to build a new road tunnel from London to Rome had been approved. A privately-made arsenal of atomic weapons had been discovered in New Jersey, Section 9 …
Interplanetary news was more interesting. Seemingly intelligent, though at present unintelligible, signals had been received from somewhere in the Pleiades group of stars and were now being studied by experts. Some kind of interstellar gas or particle weapon, believed to have been constructed by anti-human elements outside the solar system, had penetrated and destroyed three space-ships during the last twenty-four hours, and more experts, detective and scientific, were working on this problem. Dr Leiz had asked for an independent scientific body to examine his last mirror, which, he claimed, ‘shows the reflection of beings resembling ourselves exactly in manner, clothes and period but who, I am certain, have nothing whatsoever to do with us or our world.’
Coman pondered over this last item, with his feet upon the polished table top and a cigarette between his lips, until at length, with a sigh, he rose and made his way to an adjoining room, protected by all manner of lock devices, wherein were kept his most personal effects, and, of course, the machine which – for want, perhaps, of a better name – was known as the Connector. For an instant he hesitated outside the door. He had a certain right to ignore it – for a time, at least, to let things slide and allow himself a holiday. Indeed, during the previous night he had as good as promised the two who shared his bed that he would take them away from the City for a fortnight’s cruise in one of the few blue seas left on Earth. Nevertheless, he could not ignore the room and its machine, and he knew it. He had been away from the Connector too long already and, besides, he had received a namecall.
With a special key he set certain trip-mechanisms in motion and was eventually able to pass inside the door. The room was oblong, and furnished as a study, with hundreds of video- and word-books, together with tapes and records encompassing more than a thousand musical compositions, ancient and modern. In one corner his own private collection of fossils was arranged behind glass, and on one of the end walls hung a small screen of special design. Air-conditioning was maintained through the flooring; there were no windows; and all was completely sound-proof.
Coman selected a piece of music and, after setting the playback in motion and adjusting the volume, settled himself in a deep chair facing the screen, his eyes closed and all his senses, except that of hearing, closed and passive. Music, even then, had been recognised by ESPs as a splendid preliminary to subconscious awareness, and he had chosen an ancient classic, something of which he was very fond, Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, orchestrated by a modern stylist, Halen. When it was finished he stayed in his chair a little longer, then rose and fetched the Connector, and placed it on a small table by his chair.
It was a round object, no bigger than a man’s two hands, and consisted of a tiny web of crionium, a rare ore from Mercury, arranged around a lead plate, the whole enclosed in the hypothalamus and pituitary section of a human brain, floating in surgical spirit. Two leads from the containing shell were for the user to fasten to his temples. Connectors were, of course, easily transportable, but, because of their immense value, and the scarcity of the materials necessary for their construction, the few in existence were kept by their owners under many and varied safety locks, and only removed from one place to another in moments of extreme urgency. It put its wearer into contact with the thoughts of other distant keymen and keywomen whether they happened to be wired into the circuit or not, but apart from being able to send a ‘namecall’ to a particular person, the machine allowed direct communication only with other wearers.
When he had fitted the leads, Coman sat in pitch darkness, his eyes open and fixed in the direction of the screen ‘aid’, letting the thought images of his keyfellows on Earth (the machine was not able to penetrate beyond) pour into a relaxed and empty consciousness. They were like tiny, transparent eels wriggling and darting through a sea of darkness, and it took some time to sink into, or become a part of, that sea. The minutes passed, during which his face was drained of colour to become almost deathlike. His limbs grew cold and his heartbeats slowed nearly to zero.
There were three others in the sea who, like himself were wired in to Connectors, and he sensed each one now quite clearly. A man and a woman he knew only by thought – and Karns, whose brainchild the Connector was. Brilliant Karns, who, sought by many enemies, stayed many hours of each day and night wired in to the machine which he hoped would help to change the very nature of human life.
K. Come now Coman, respond.
C. Coman responding.
(It had been an effort to overlay the wriggling eels.)
K. I called you a long time ago. Why take so long?
C. Am I a dog, that I should come running?
K. Coman, all think well of you, for you have skill in doing as well as thinking.
Coman felt sad annoyance at this, for he not only disliked flattery but also felt Karen’s regret at the apparent necessity to flatter. Karns was the best of them all, and it was even believed that he was connected in some with the Unknown Minds, those thought-processes whose presence could only be sensed and never traced, but who quite certainly existed in or around the pool, or Void of the human unconscious.
K. As we proceed the road becomes more difficult, the questions and answers more complicated. As new conditions and emergencies arise, the best men’s brains are continually altering and fluctuating in order to cope, and thus protect their owners from madness and ruin.
C. This must be so.
K. Our task then becomes ever more involved. We have taken it upon ourselves to meddle and cannot turn back.
There was a long pause.
C. So?
K. So these new and potentially important trends have to be explored and resolved one way or another, preferably with our help.
C. All these points are taken. What do you suggest?
K. Don’t misunderstand. You’re entitled to rest and relaxation, more perhaps than many others, but you must report, observe and add. Whether you feel bound to intervene actively, or merely to take part in
the thought processes doesn’t matter – but always report and observe without delay.
This meant that, on his return to Earth, he should really have gone straight to the Connector. But it was pointless to become exasperated now, and fatal to the Connector anyway.
C. I had not fully realised the new feeling or urgency. My report is as follows.
He proceeded to give images of his stay on Venus, of thought she had conceived during his mission, and all other thought images which had struck particular interest in his own mind. All were recorded in the dark sea, ready to be transmitted to anyone who might request them at a future time.
K. Thank you. Now will you observe?
C. With your help.
He then relinquished all but the last lifeline to consciousness, and the two men, like trapeze artists, caught each other in a moment of split – second timing and plunged into the void of world unconsciousness. As this Void, with its countless billions of thoughts – savage and peaceful, malicious and loving, daring and afraid – swept over him, they both reached the lowest point of the arc, and Karns let go. Coman was alone, falling through a vast complexity of soundless voices and grotesque images.
To the early mind-traveller, this was the most frightening and troublesome experience of all, for it is in this state, when the flesh is quite forgotten, that a human being is no longer human – becoming, so to speak, little more than a whisper in Eternity. Paradoxically, it is only when in this condition that he is aware of the fact that a Scheme does exist – but this, far from being a happy realisation, enables him to glimpse too just how infinitely small is his part in it. It is then, also, that he frequently senses the ever-watchful Unknown Minds, and, being a keyman still, becomes himself a man of double deed.
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