The Randall Garrett Omnibus

by Randall Garrett

  The corridor door was closed and locked behind Candron as he walked toward the three interior guards. They were three more big, tough Mongols, all wearing the insignia of lieutenants. This was not a prisoner who could be entrusted to the care of common soldiers; the secret was too important to allow the hoi polloi in on it. They carried no weapons; the three of them could easily take care of Ch’ien if he tried anything foolish, and besides, it kept weapons out of Ch’ien’s reach. There were other methods of taking care of the prisoner if the guards were inadequate.

  The two officers who were playing cards looked up, acknowledged Dr. Wan’s presence, and went back to their game. The third, after glancing at the screen, opened the door to James Ch’ien’s apartment. Spencer Candron stepped inside.

  It was because of those few seconds—the time during which that door was open—that Candron had called the monitors who watched Ch’ien’s apartment. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have bothered. He needed fifteen seconds in which to act, and he couldn’t do it with that door open. If the monitors had given an alarm in these critical seconds…

  But they hadn’t, and they wouldn’t. Not yet.

  The man who was sitting in the easy-chair on the opposite side of the room looked up as Candron entered.

  James Ch’ien (B.S., M.S., M.I.T., Ph. D., U.C.L.A.) was a young man, barely past thirty. His tanned face no longer wore the affable smile that Candron had seen in photographs, and the jet-black eyes beneath the well-formed brows were cold instead of friendly, but the intelligence behind the face still came through.

  As the door was relocked behind him, Candron said, in Cantonese: “This unworthy one hopes that the excellent doctor is well. Permit me to introduce my unworthy self: I am Dr. Wan Feng.”

  Dr. Ch’ien put the book he was reading in his lap. He looked at the ceiling in exasperation, then back at Candron. “All right,” he said in English, “so you don’t believe me. But I’ll repeat it again in the hope that I can get it through your skulls.” It was obvious that he was addressing, not only his visitor, but anyone else who might be listening.

  “I do not speak Chinese,” he said, emphasizing each word separately. “I can say ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good-by’, and that’s about it. I do wish I could say ‘drop dead,’ but that’s a luxury I can’t indulge. If you can speak English, then go ahead; if not, quit wasting my time and yours. Not,” he added, “that it won’t be a waste of time anyway, but at least it will relieve the monotony.”

  Candron knew that Ch’ien was only partially telling the truth. The physicist spoke the language badly, but he understood it fairly well.

  “Sorry, doctor,” Candron said in English, “I guess I forgot myself. I am Dr. Wan Feng.”

  Ch’ien’s expression didn’t change, but he waved to a nearby chair. “Sit down, Dr. Feng, and tell me what propaganda line you’ve come to deliver now.”

  Candron smiled and shook his head slowly. “That was unworthy of you, Dr. Ch’ien. Even though you have succumbed to the Western habit of putting the family name last, you are perfectly aware that ‘Wan,’ not ‘Feng,’ is my family name.”

  The physicist didn’t turn a hair. “Force of habit, Dr. Wan. Or, rather, a little retaliation. I was called ‘Dakta Chamis’ for two days, and even those who could pronounce the name properly insisted on ‘Dr. James.’ But I forget myself. I am supposed to be the host here. Do sit down and tell me why I should give myself over to Communist China just because my grandfather was born here back in the days when China was a republic.”

  * * *

  Spencer Candron knew that time was running out, but he had to force Ch’ien into the right position before he could act. He wished again that he had been able to keep the cigarettes. Ch’ien was a moderately heavy smoker, and one of those drugged cigarettes would have come in handy now. As it was, he had to handle it differently. And that meant a different approach.

  “No, Dr. Ch’ien,” he said, in a voice that was deliberately too smooth, “I will not sit down, thank you. I would prefer that you stand up.”

  The physicist’s face became a frozen mask. “I see that the doctorate you claim is not for studies in the field of physics. You’re not here to worm things out of me by discussing my work talking shop. What is it, DoctorWan?”

  "I am a psychologist.” Candron said. He knew that the monitors watching the screens and listening to the conversation were recording everything. He knew that they shouldn't be suspicious yet. But if the real General Soong should decide to check on what his important guest was doing....

  "A psychologist,” Ch'ien repeated in a monotone. “I see."

  "Yes. Now, will you stand, or do I have to ask the guards to lift you to your feet?"

  James Ch'ien recognized the inevitable, so he stood. But there was a wary expression in his black eyes. He was not a tall man; he stood nearly an inch shorter than Candron himself.

  "You have nothing to fear, Dr. Ch'ien,” Candron said smoothly. “I merely wish to test a few of your reactions. We do not wish to hurt you.” He put his hands on the other man's shoulders, and positioned him. “There," he said. “Now. Look to the left."

  "Hypnosis, eh?” Ch'ien said with a grim smile. “All right. Go ahead.” He looked to his left.

  "Not with your head,” Candron said calmly. “Face me and look to the left with your eyes."

  Ch’ien did so, saying: “I’m afraid you’ll have to use drugs after all, Dr. Wan. I will not be hypnotized.”

  “I have no intention of hypnotizing you. Now look to the right.”

  Ch’ien obeyed.

  Candron’s right hand was at his side, and his left hand was toying with a button on his coat. “Now up,” he said.

  Dr. James Ch’ien rolled his eyeballs upward.

  Candron had already taken a deep breath. Now he acted. His right hand balled into a fist and arced upwards in a crashing uppercut to Ch’ien’s jaw. At almost the same time, he jerked the button off his coat, cracked it with his fingers along the special fissure line, and threw it to the floor.

  As the little bomb spewed forth unbelievable amounts of ultra-finely divided carbon in a dense black cloud of smoke, Candron threw both arms around the collapsing physicist, ignoring the pain in the knuckles of his right hand. The smoke cloud billowed around them, darkening the room and obscuring the view from the monitor screens that were watching them. Candron knew that the guards were acting now; he knew that the big Mongols outside were already inserting the key in the door and inserting their nose plugs; he knew that the men in the monitor room had hit an alarm button and had already begun to flood the room with sleep gas. But he paid no attention to these things.

  Instead, he became homesick.

  Home. It was a little place he knew and loved. He could no longer stand the alien environment around him; it was repugnant, repelling. All he could think of was a little room, a familiar room, a beloved room. He knew the cracks in its ceiling, the feel of the varnish on the homely little desk, the touch of the worn carpet against his feet, the very smell of the air itself. And he loved them and longed for them with all the emotional power that was in him.

  And suddenly the darkness of the smoke-filled prison apartment was gone.

  Spencer Candron stood in the middle of the little hotel room he had rented early that morning. In his arms, he held the unconscious figure of Dr. James Ch’ien.

  He gasped for breath, then, with an effort, he stooped, allowed the limp body of the physicist to collapse over his shoulder, and stood straight again, carrying the man like a sack of potatoes. He went to the door of the room and opened it carefully. The hall was empty. Quickly, he moved outside, closing the door behind him, and headed toward the stair. This time, he dared not trust the elevator shaft. The hotel only boasted one elevator, and it might be used at any time. Instead, he allowed his dislike for the stair treads to adjust his weight to a few pounds, and then ran up them two at a time.

  On the roof of the hotel, he adjusted his
emotional state once more, and he and his sleeping burden drifted off into the night, toward the sea.

  * * *

  No mind is infinitely flexible, infinitely malleable, infinitely capable of taking punishment, just as no material substance, however constructed, is capable of absorbing the energies brought to bear against it indefinitely.

  A man can hate with a virulent hatred, but unless time is allowed to dull and soothe that hatred, the mind holding it will become corroded and cease to function properly, just as a machine of the finest steel will become corroded and begin to fail if it is drenched with acid or exposed to the violence of an oxidizing atmosphere.

  The human mind can insulate itself, for a time, against the destructive effects of any emotion, be it hatred, greed, despondency, contentment, happiness, pleasure, anger, fear, lust, boredom, euphoria, determination, or any other of the myriads of “ills” that man’s mind—and thus his flesh—is heir to. As long as a mind is capable of changing from one to another, to rotate its crops, so to speak, the insulation will remain effective, and the mind will remain undamaged. But any single emotional element, held for too long, will break down the resistance of the natural insulation and begin to damage the mind.

  Even that least virulent of emotions, love, can destroy. The hot, passionate love between new lovers must be modified or it will kill. Only when its many facets can be shifted around, now one and now the other coming into play, can love be endured for any great length of time.

  Possibly the greatest difference between the sane and the unsane is that the sane know when to release a destructive force before it does more than minimal damage; to modify or eliminate an emotional condition before it becomes a deadly compulsion; to replace one set of concepts with another when it becomes necessary to do so; to recognize that point when the mind must change its outlook or die. To stop the erosion, in other words, before it becomes so great that it cannot be repaired.

  For the human mind cannot contain any emotion, no matter how weak or how fleeting, without change. And the point at which that change ceases to be constructive and becomes, instead, destructive—that is the ultimate point beyond which no human mind can go without forcing a change—anychange—in itself.

  Spencer Candron knew that. To overuse the psionic powers of the human mind is as dangerous as overusing morphine or alcohol. There are limits to mental powers, even as there are limits to physical powers.

  Psychokinesis is defined as the ability of a human mind to move, no matter how slightly, a physical object by means of psionic application alone. In theory, then, one could move planets, stars, even whole galaxies by thought alone. But, in physical terms, the limit is easily seen. Physically, it would be theoretically possible to destroy the sun if one had enough atomic energy available, but that would require the energy of another sun—or more. And, at that point, the Law of Diminishing Returns comes into operation. If you don’t want a bomb to explode, but the only way to destroy that bomb is by blowing it up with another bomb of equal power, where is the gain?

  And if the total mental power required to move a planet is greater than any single human mind can endure—or even greater than the total mental endurance of a thousand planetsfull of minds, is there any gain?

  There is not, and can never be, a system without limits, and the human mind is a system which obeys that law.

  None the less, Spencer Candron kept his mind on flight, on repulsion, on movement, as long as he could. He was perfectly willing to destroy his own mind for a purpose, but he had no intention of destroying it uselessly. He didn’t know how long he kept moving eastward; he had no way of knowing how much distance he had covered nor how long it had taken him. But, somewhere out over the smoothly undulating surface of the Pacific, he realized that he was approaching his limit. And, a few seconds later, he detected the presence of men beneath the sea.

  He knew they were due to rise an hour before dawn, but he had no idea how long that would be. He had lost all track of time. He had been keeping his mind on controlling his altitude and motion, and, at the same time, been careful to see whether Dr. Ch’ien came out of his unconscious state. Twice more he had had to strike the physicist to keep him out cold, and he didn’t want to do it again.

  So, when he sensed the presence of the American submarine beneath the waves, he sank gratefully into the water, changing the erosive power of the emotion that had carried him so far, and relaxing into the simple physical routine of keeping both himself and Ch’ien afloat.

  By the time the submarine surfaced a dozen yards away, Spencer Candron was both physically and mentally exhausted. He yelled at the top of his lungs, and then held on to consciousness just long enough to be rescued.

  * * *

  “The official story,” said Senator Kerotski, “is that an impostor had taken Dr. Ch’ien’s place before he ever left the United States—” He grinned. “At least, the substitution took place before the delegates reached China. So the ‘assassination’ was really no assassination at all. Ch’ien was kidnaped here, and a double put in his place in Peiping. That absolves both us and the Chinese Government of any complicity. We save face for them, and they save face for us. Since he turned up here, in the States, it’s obvious that he couldn’t have been in China.” He chuckled, but there was no mirth in it. “So the cold war still continues. We know what they did, and—in a way—they know what we did. But not how we did it.”

  The senator looked at the other two men who were with him on the fifth floor office of the Society for Mystical and Metaphysical Research. Taggert was relaxing on his couch, and Spencer Candron, just out of the hospital, looked rather pale as he sat in the big, soft chair that Taggert had provided.

  The senator looked at Candron. “The thing I don’t understand is, why was it necessary to knock out Ch’ien? He’ll have a sore jaw for weeks. Why didn’t you just tell him who you were and what you were up to?”

  Candron glanced at Taggert, but Taggert just grinned and nodded.

  “We couldn’t allow that,” said Candron, looking at Senator Kerotski. “Dr. James Ch’ien has too much of a logical, scientific mind for that. We’d have ruined him if he’d seen me in action.”

  The senator looked a little surprised. “Why? We’ve convinced other scientists that they were mistaken in their observations. Why not Ch’ien?”

  “Ch’ien is too good a scientist,” Candron said. “He’s not the type who would refuse to believe something he saw simply because it didn’t agree with his theories. Ch’ien is one of those dangerous in-betweens. He’s too brilliant to be allowed to go to waste, and, at the same time, too rigid to change his manner of thinking. If he had seen me teleport or levitate, he wouldn’t reject it—he’d try to explain it. And that would have effectively ruined him.”

  “Ruined him?” The senator looked a little puzzled.

  Taggert raised his heavy head from the couch. “Sure, Leo,” he said to the senator. “Don’t you see? We need Ch’ien on this interstellar project. He absolutely must dope out the answer somehow, and no one else can do it as quickly.”

  “With the previous information,” the senator said, “we would have been able to continue.”

  “Yeah?” Taggert said, sitting up. “Has anyone been able to dope out Fermat’s Last Theorem without Fermat? No. So why ruin Ch’ien?”

  “It would ruin him,” Candron broke in, before the senator could speak. “If he saw, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that levitation and teleportation were possible, he would have accepted his own senses as usable data on definite phenomena. But, limited as he is by his scientific outlook, he would have tried to evolve a scientific theory to explain what he saw. What else could a scientist do?”

  Senator Kerotski nodded, and his nod said: “I see. He would have diverted his attention from the field of the interstellar drive to the field of psionics. And he would have wasted years trying to explain an inherently nonlogical area of knowledge by logical means.”

  “That�
�s right,” Candron said. “We would have set him off on a wild goose chase, trying to solve the problems of psionics by the scientific, the logical, method. We would have presented him with an unsolvable problem.”

  Taggert patted his knees. “We would have given him a problem that he could not solve with the methodology at hand. It would be as though we had proved to an ancient Greek philosopher that the cube could be doubled, and then allowed him to waste his life trying to do it with a straight-edge and compass.”

  “We know Ch’ien’s psychological pattern,” Candron continued. “He’s not capable of admitting that there is any other thought pattern than the logical. He would try to solve the problems of psionics by logical methods, and would waste the rest of his life trying to do the impossible.”

  The senator stroked his chin. “That’s clear,” he said at last. “Well, it was worth a cracked jaw to save him. We’ve given him a perfectly logical explanation of his rescue and, simultaneously, we’ve put the Chinese government into absolute confusion. They have no idea of how you got out of there, Candron.”

  “That’s not as important as saving Ch’ien,” Candron said.

  “No,” the senator said quickly, “of course not. After all, the Secretary of Research needs Dr. Ch’ien—the man’s important.”

  Spencer Candron smiled. “I agree. He’s practically indispensable—as much as a man can be.”

  “He’s the Secretary’s right hand man,” said Taggert firmly.

  THE END

  INSTANT OF DECISION

  When the sharp snap of a pistol shot came from the half-finished building, Karnes wasn't anywhere near the sandpile that received the slug. He was fifteen feet away, behind the much more reliable protection of a neat stack of cement bags that provided cover all the way to a window in the empty shell of brick and steel before him.