by Ron Goulart
“No, go on.”
“I got angry. Guys watching me, I wanted to get here to talk to you, but I couldn’t see how to get clear of this pair. Then, in just seconds, I was standing here in Central Park.”
“Teleportation. You know the word, Teddy,” said the priest, letting smoke go toward the ceiling. “It’s one of your several telekinetic powers. You can move objects, other people, yourself.”
“That can’t be true. If I could do anything like that I’d certainly be aware—”
“Asshole, they don’t want you to know. When the Total Security Agency discovered you had telek abilities, they most likely discovered you had strong moral scruples, too.”
“I’m not some kind of prude or—”
“Scruples against killing. With TSA, agents such as you are handled very carefully. They put you into some sort of trance state before sending you out on a job. You’re not the only unaware agent they—”
“No, even if they put me in a trance, I can’t do any of that stuff. I can’t lift up people, move furniture around.”
“Don’t try to con me, Teddy, or yourself,” the priest said. “Quite obviously, once TSA discovered your potential they developed it, processed you over a period of time so you could fully use your latent abilities. They don’t want you to know about any of that.”
Ted shook his head. “I don’t see. . . . Hey, the dreams!” He stopped still in his pacing. “That’s what the dreams mean. I’ve been trying to tell myself something.”
“No kidding? Fancy that.”
“Sure, and carrying that suitcase around, that’s a symbol for these telekinetic powers.”
“Right, and not an especially brilliant one,” said Ortega. “Looks like your mind’s starting to come back under your control. Sometimes happens.”
“Your girl, the one who approached me at Evriman, she knew about the dreams. And you seem to know about what happened at the last TF session in my neighborhood.”
“I have agents planted here and there myself. I’m serious about dumping the Hartwell administration. To me priesthood means a hell of a lot more than simply—”
“How about what I’ve been dreaming? You seem to—”
“You talked about the dream at the TF session. You presented it as though it were a real event, but it was quite obviously a dream. A recurrent one.”
“Then you’ve got an agent in that group of ours?”
Ortega slapped the briefcase. “Do you want to go on being a TSA assassin?”
After twisting his hands together, Ted pointed at the papers Ortega was tugging out of the briefcase. “How many. . . ?”
“How many men, do you mean, have you killed? Fifteen so far.”
“Fifteen? Jesus.” The breath seemed to spill out of him.
“So, Teddy, do you want to quit or not?”
He had trouble filling his lungs again. “How could I . . . kill . . . how could I kill fifteen men and not even know I did it?” Ted groped out with his hand. Not finding the barrel, he lowered himself down to the floor. “How can I ever. . . ?”
“Atone?”
“Something like that.”
“You can help me.”
“Help you how?”
“We’re going to stop the Total Security Agency, expose it and finish it. We’re going to topple the administration, President Hartwell and all the rest.”
“You’ve got all kinds of information already,” said Ted. “You don’t need me to—”
“I want somebody deep inside TSA. I want to know a hell of a lot more about them. So you keep working for them, but—”
“I thought you were going to help me stop.”
“Stop killing, yeah. But I want you to stay with TSA for awhile, I want the names of everybody inside, I want more information.”
“If I keep working as a Total Security agent, they can make me kill somebody again. How can I keep from do—”
“Go see Goodanyetz.”
“Huh?”
“He’s a defrocked professor. Goodanyetz’ll teach you how to keep from going under the next time they want to use you.”
“Okay, where is he?”
“He insists on living in the Bronx. I’ve got somebody to take you to him now.”
Ted said, “When TSA . . . when they do whatever it is they do . . . when they process me . . . that must turn on my abilities, too.”
“We imagine that’s what happens, yeah.”
“So if Goodanyetz can work it, I’ll be in control of all these telek powers and I’ll know it, be completely aware of what I can do.”
Reverend Ortega watched him for a few seconds. “That’s one of the problems you’ll have to face.”
“Problems?” said Ted.
Chapter 8
“Don’t you see the cross, you dumb farbs?”
The low-flying skycar was being shaken by intermittent soundgun blasts from below.
“Who’s doing that?” Ted asked his guide and pilot, whose name was Casper.
“The cross, you stupid nerds!” The short black young man was shouting into his talkstick. “See it on the ass-end of this machine? This is one of Rev O’s skycars.”
The shooting diminished.
“Stupid farbs,” said the Negro. “A rotten bunch anyway, the Block 26 Angels.”
“Some kind of street gang?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Casper decided to yell into the mike again. “Dumb farbheaded bastards! You got no respect for the Church?”
The skycar circled, dropping lower and lower, passing over black, ruined buildings.
“Too bad you’re in a hurry,” Casper said. “I could show you my collection.”
“Collection of what?”
“Animals,” replied the Negro as he brought the skycar down into a rubble-strewn street. “I got the biggest collection in New York.”
“You mean stuffed animals or—”
“No, alive ones.” The car bounced and rattled to a stop. “I got sixty-eight at our place. My brother and three sisters, we got an apartment building we fixed up over on Block 31. We got fourteen rabbits. . . . They’re really hard to get, we had to swap six dogs for the last one, for only one rabbit. We got twenty-five dogs, including a Great Dane. You ever heard of a Great Dane?”
“Seen pictures.”
“Trouble is,” said Casper, unfastening his safety gear, “they got this thing called ZeroPet. Those stupid farbs would love to find our place. So would the Block 28 Angels.”
Climbing out his side of the skycar, Ted said, “I thought you called them the Block 26 Angels.”
“That’s a different gang,” explained Casper. “Around here we got the Block 25 Angels, the Block 26 Angels, the Block 27 Angels, the Block 28 Angels and so on. Most of these kids don’t have much imagination.”
On Ted’s right, glowing amidst the collapsed apartment houses, was a white two-story building. Freshly painted, orange light showing through its curtained windows. “Is that Goodanyetz’s place?”
“Yeah, him and his mother live there. She keeps him diddling all the time. He painted the whole farbing thing himself, after he renovated it. The Block 27 Angels helped a little, but then they got to rolling the old lady down stairs and—”
“Hands high!” The carved-wood front door had swung inward several inches. A husky old woman in a two-piece overall suit stood there pointing two stunguns at them.
“It’s me, Mrs. Goodanyetz, Casper,” the black young man announced from the bottom step. “This guy with me is the one Rev O radioed you about.”
“What’s your name?” she asked Ted. “Ted Briar.”
“That’s not the name came out of the radio. The name Reverend Ortega mentioned was Red Dwyer.”
“It wasn’t, Mom.” A plump, pale man of forty appeared next to the old woman, drying his hands with a hot-air tube. “Mother’s hearing isn’t all—”
“Did you finish in the kitchen?”
“Yes,” said Goodanyetz. “All except putting the defrost
er away.”
“You go finish up your jobs. Then it’ll be time for social discourse.”
“This isn’t social, it’s political. Now don’t go screwing up the efforts of a man like Rev—”
“It’s not so good,” reminded Casper, “to holler our business out in the street.”
“All right then, come on in,” invited Mrs. Goodanyetz. “I don’t know why they nicknamed you Red.”
“Same way they nickname fat boys Slim,” said Ted.
“I thought you were supposed to vacuum the thermals in the parlor.”
“Give me a chance, Mom. You said to get the—”
“We’ll let it pass. You sit and chat with your friends, I’ll finish up your work.”
When the three men were seated in the circular parlor, Goodanyetz said, “Mother’s really a nice person. It’s simply that—”
“Would they like some nearcaf?” She reappeared in the parlor doorway.
“No, thanks, Mrs. Goodanyetz,” said Casper. “How about you, Red?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Not at all.” To her son she said, “Go make a pot.”
“Mom, I have to talk to these two on important business. I can’t—”
“We won’t fight about it. I’ll do it.” She left them to go muttering away to the kitchen.
“We have to get him back to Connecticut before sunup,” reminded Casper. “So you got to work fast, Goodanyetz.”
The plump man was surveying Ted. “I’ll only need a couple hours. Don’t worry, once I go to work, Mom usually doesn’t butt in,” he said. “How long have you possessed psi powers?”
“I’m not sure I do, even now.”
“Rev O tells me you teleported here tonight. So you must be able to control at least some of your abilities.”
“Not really. What happened was I got mad because a couple guys were watching my house and my wife . . . that’s not important. I got mad, the next thing I knew I was standing in Central Park.”
“Okay, at least this gives us a starting point. Now, I’ve seen the file the reverend’s been building on you. It seems—”
“Oh my heart! Oh, what pains!” cried Mrs. Goodanyetz from the kitchen.
Ted jumped up.
“Ignore her,” advised Casper, who’d remained seated. “A bid for attention,” said Goodanyetz.
Thud!
“She fell over,” said Ted.
“She’ll get up,” her son assured him. “What I was going to say was, your awareness of your abilities seems to be coming closer to the surface.”
“Oh, to die like this on my unswept kitchen floor.”
Ted glanced at the doorway. “I suppose the dreams have been trying to tell me about this for several months now,” he said. “From what the reverend implied the Total Security people have a process for activating all my latent abilities. They don’t want me to know about it, though.”
“Exactly,” said Goodanyetz. “What we’ll do is this. I’ll fix you up, using a few tricks I’ve worked out since I left Brainwave Department at Yale-2, so you’ll be able to resist going under. Thus you’ll be able to recall what happens while you’re acting as an agent for TSA and they think you’re in a docile stupor.”
“But I’ll be able to use all these powers I’m supposed to have, consciously control them?”
“Don’t see why not. We’ll let them turn your powers on, just as they always have. Only this time you should be in complete control.” Goodanyetz, slowly, got up. “Mom’s never been quiet this long before. Maybe it really was some kind of attack. Excuse me, I’d better go see.”
“What do you think? Can you?”
“I’m trying, but nothing.” Ted and Casper were in the skycar, moving across the 5 a.m. sky toward Brimstone.
“Because if you could teleport yourself home from here, I could turn around for home that much quicker. I should take over guard duty in about a half hour.”
“Guard duty?”
“On our animal collection.”
“Oh, sure, I forgot.” Ted pressed his fingertips harder into his palms. “Nope, can’t seem to do it. Remember, Goodanyetz only taught me how to avoid being entranced. I still don’t have any control over—”
“It’s okay, don’t strain. I really don’t mind flying, except I get to worrying about the animals. We got eight chipmunks, did I tell you? They’re cute little bastards, chipmunks. I found a book about housepets in the ruins of the big library on Forty-second in Manhattan and they said you can’t make a pet out of a chipmunk. But you can. You ought to see them eat out of my hand.”
“Next time I’m in the Bronx I’ll have to drop in.”
“Naw, you won’t. You’re an okay sort of person, Ted, but you don’t have any feeling for animals.”
After a moment Ted said, “I guess Mrs. Goodanyetz didn’t really have a heart attack, huh?”
“She never does. Shit, she had one of those orlon-noryl hearts put in about six years back,” said Casper. “ Hey, that looks like your stop coming up. I’ll drop down a ways from your house so nobody will spot me.”
“Since the reverend’s people aren’t watching my house, it must be TSA people,” said Ted. “Why, I wonder.”
“They watch lots of things.”
“But how come me all at once?”
“You don’t know it’s all at once. Could be they been eyeing you for years and you only just tumbled,” said Casper, getting set to land. “Don’t worry, anyhow. . . . Rev O will find out about everything.”
Five minutes later Ted was moving, carefully, through the predawn streets of Brimstone. “Stay off the Melmoths’ lawn, they’ve got a whistle alarm. . . . Don’t cross the Jakesens’ landing strip, because of those two robot watchounds. . . . Watch out for Doug Fine’s— Who’s that hovering over our back lawn?” He stopped, ducked behind a decorative tree a half block down from the back side of his house. “Not the cops. Nope, but I’ve seen that skycar before.” He stalked, ducked low, to a nearer tree. “Damn, that’s Jay Perlberg’s ship. Sure, there’s the glowing JP on the ass-end. What’s my boss doing over my back lawn at— Holy Christ! He’s the one! He’s the one Haley’s sleeping with.”
Chapter 9
Naked and dripping wet, Haley came stomping into the dining nook. “It still doesn’t work,” she complained.
Ted was scraping black off the underside of his English-like muffin. “What this time?”
“Well, what do you think? The damn cleansing cubicle.” She thrust out a wet arm. “The dry hoses aren’t functioning, for one thing.”
“Don’t drip into the neomarmalade, huh?” He slid the jug aside. “And smell.”
Ted sniffed the wrist she held under his nose. “Plant food, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess it is. It’s not body-detergent fluid, but the cubicle squished it all over me.” Haley sat down, with a damp plumping sound, in the breakfast chair opposite him. “I really get unsettled when our house doesn’t function right, Ted. I feel as though something were wrong with me personally.”
“No chance of anything like that,” he said as he took a crunching bite of the overdone muffin.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Merely light-before-work conversation.”
“You don’t really care that our house is going completely flooey before your eyes.” Haley pulled a plyonap out of the table slot, began patting the damp spots on her shoulders and breasts. “And it’s been this way for almost a week, ever since last Sunday.”
“Last Saturday.” Ted took another bite. “We had the house mechanics in Monday, at special-emergency rates, and they told me they put everything back in shipshape.”
“Oh, they could tell you anything and you’d believe them,” she said. “The house is obviously still not functioning properly. Here I sit covered with plant food, your cruller is burned beyond rec—”
“It’s a muffin.”
“See? I dialed crullers for your breakfast.�
� Haley hugged her naked self, began to cry. “My whole world is toppling around me.”
Ted stayed where he was. “I’ll call the house mechanics again. Meantime, why don’t you shower and such up at the hospital?”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t imagine you’d get plant food sprayed all over you up at Dynamo Hill.”
“No, Dynamo Hill is a very efficient hospital.” Haley, still dripping, stood up. “Did I tell you they’re expecting another emergency up there this weekend?”
“Oh, really?” The overtoasted muffin crackled between his thumb and forefinger. “So you probably won’t be home at all.”
His wife crossed the room to the exit ramp. “No, I’ll most likely be there from this afternoon until Monday morning sometime.”
“House will probably be working perfectly by the time you get back.”
“I wish Captain Beck, or Colonel, or whatever he is, would stop by now. I could tell him a few things about our way of life around here,” said Haley, taking another step further away from Ted. “You know . . . Ted?”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, nothing.” She left the dining-nook area.
“Almost a week,” Ted said to himself. He hadn’t mentioned any of it yet to Haley. Nothing about his visit to Reverend Ortega, and what he’d found out about himself and his abilities. There hadn’t been another summons to act as an agent for TSA yet. Ted hadn’t mentioned, either, that he knew Haley wasn’t working up at Dynamo Hill anymore, that he knew about her and Jay Perlberg. And now she was going to take another weekend off and—
“Time to embark for the Fuh-fuh-fuh-federal Repo Bureau,” the house told him. Its voice sounded old and tinny.
Ted was pretty certain that, angry, he’d turned off the entire house, using his telek powers, just before heading out to meet with Rev O that night. “Listen, I’m sorry I used my powers to foul you up the other . . . never mind.”
“Didn’t quite catch that, my hearing hasn’t been so hot since—”
“Nothing, never mind.” Ted remembered he didn’t trust his house either.
