Psi-High and Others (Ace G-730)

by Alan E Nourse

  It was possible, of course, that the change in the search pattern had worried the alien. Logically, a dragnet should have been set up in Chicago, and the entranceways to all the large cities guarded carefully. That was what the computer had said. “Probability is strong that the alien desires to remain in a city, but evidence suggests that Chicago may not be the optimum location for him. Recommend heavy Security measures be taken in all surrounding cities of size as well as Chicago. Probability is four-plus high that the alien is seeking some specific information. Advise close control of all spaceports, air transit outlets and rolling-road escapeways.”

  And so forth. That was what the computer had said. Of course, the computer was not infallible, but its analysis and recommendations were utterly logical on the basis of the information given it.

  Which was exactly the reason they were being carefully ignored.

  It was a gamble, and no one was more aware of this than Faircloth. Reluctantly, Roberts pulled all Security personnel out of the Chicago area, Psi-High and otherwise, except for a small crew headed by Ted Marino, who were scattered throughout the city with orders to carefully avoid contact among themselves. A gamble, but it was not entirely guesswork that made Paul so certain that the alien, if left suddenly and completely alone, would try to make contact with a Psi-High mind sooner or later. Of course, that conclusion itself was the result of logical reasoning. No matter how they tried to remove logic from their approach, it crept in, it had to creep in. It was logical that a telepathically sensitive creature, visiting an alien planet in obvious secrecy, would seek to leam something about the segment of the population that might be able to expose his presence. He would seek signs of his own kind of mental capability. He might even have to; Paul knew all too well that a Psi-High mind cut off and Isolated from any psi-contact soon was a sick mind. That was why Psi-Highs always settled in the cities, why they sought each other out with such fierce, desperate clannishness—a tendency which, in itself, had bred suspicion of Psi-Highs in the minds of psi-negatives. What psi-negatives couldn’t really comprehend was that with Psi-Highs it wasn’t a matter of choice. It was a desperate need. And Paul knew how overwhelming that need could be.

  No, logically the alien would make contact with a human Psi-High, sooner or later. It would not be difficult to spot such a contact. The Psi-Highs were very few in number, only a couple of hundred scattered in small colonies in the larger cities of the North American States. With painstaking care each one had been contacted and warned, and those working in Security were staked out in the most likely places for the contact that they expected. The roads were left free, and the airports and spaceports were not checked. No dragnet-just an invisible network of human minds spread across the country, delicately tuned, waiting for the spark of contact.

  Faircloth was asleep when the call finally came. He rolled groggily out of bed and snapped on the visiphone screen. Ted Marino’s face materialized eerily, a frightened, shaking Marino whose eyes were wide with horror, and whose hands jerked and jerked as he tried to control them. His voice was on the thin edge of hysteria. “He hit me, Paul. Just a little while ago. He hit me hard."

  Paul leaned forward, staring at the man’s face. He had expected contact. He had not expected this kind of contact. “Ted, are you hurt?’

  “No, no. But let me tell you, I can’t take that again."

  “You’re sure it wasn’t just another Psi-High contacting you? It’s deadly important, Ted.”

  Marino shook his head vehemently. “No, no, no. It couldn’t have been that. I know what normal Psi-High contact is like. This was—different. It was as if he’d opened up my skull and scooped out my brains.”

  Faircloth nodded, trembling with excitement. “Did you try to fight him?”

  “I tried. He had me wide open before I knew what had happened, but I tried. I—I think it puzzled him. It didn’t stop him at all, he just brushed it aside like cobwebs, but it puzzled him—” The man hesitated. “It was awful, Paul. I want to get this bird as badly as you, but I don’t know if I can stand another blast like that.”

  “You aren’t going to have to,” Faircloth said. “You’ve done great, but your part in it is over now. Don’t write a report about what happened. Don’t even thjpk about it. Get dressed and get on a plane out of there. Go to Florida, Rio, any place as long as its remote and out of touch. Use your expense account, and have yourself the time of your life.” Marino’s eyes opened in amazement. “Are you crazy? ] thought this was what we’ve been waiting fori”

  “It is, but your part in the plan is over. Do what I say and don’t worry about it. When you’ve gotten a good rest come back to the Hoffman Center and take up your training with Dr. Abrams where you left off.” Paul flipped the switch and turned back to the room, exultant. He clapped his hand.1 in glee, and began to pack his bag.

  The chase was on, with a vengeance. But this time, the mouse was chasing the cat.

  IX

  Then, as if a dam had broken, the reports began streaming in Three more from Chicago, one from Cleveland, from a Psi High technician there who was not even remotely connectei with Security. From Pittsburgh, from New Philadelphit Like a fearful ominous flood, reports of the alien’s contact swarmed in. Paul Faircloth and Jean Sanders plotted them, and waited, and got ready.

  Their headquarters were in a small suite of rooms in a middle class residential hotel in the heavily built-up metropolitan area between Washington and Baltimore. Few Federal Security agents, Psi-High or otherwise, knew this; all most of the team had was a visiphone priority code number, and a special word-key for scrambling messages. Faircloth had insisted on this. Of all the agents posted and assigned, only Paul, Jean, and Roberts knew the true nature of the operation. Each of them worked out his own illogical details without even telling the other. The wisdom of such a procedure was graphically illustrated a dozen times over. The alien’s work, when he did it, was thorough. The operative in Pittsburgh had tried to fight back the alien’s telepathic overtures, as instructed, and suffered a burst of wrath that had left him blubbering in a comer for three days until a crew of Hoffman Center physicians located him and straightened him out with stimulants and glucose. More and more, the alien’s puzzlement and frustration and anger began to seep through in the contact reports, and Paul and Jean watched and nodded approvingly.

  Meanwhile, other steps were taken. Three times, when they were certain the alien had left a locality, they ordered cleanup squads to raid his former quarters, quizzing neighbors, asking multitudes of idiotic questions, uncovering half a dozen descriptions and leads—all of which they assiduously ignored. They began stabbing erratically at locations where the alien had not yet been, raids carried out with a relentlessness and singleness of mind that left the unfortunates who were questioned shaking in their boots. Even the agents themselves were confused as to the purpose of these raids, and were cheerfully allowed to remain confused. Still other tactics were pursued, a series of disjointed, uncoordinated, abortive and harassing procedures, as though the whole search had suddenly fallen into the hands of a madman. A rocket ship bound for Venus was delayed four days beyond an opposition, adding a half-million dollars to the cost of fueling it. A whole series of road blocks was thrown up between New York and New Philadelphia, virtually paralyzing commercial traffic between the cities for two days, for no coherent reason. An order went out, quite arbitrarily, to apprehend and search all passengers on the great St. Louis-New York rolling-roads route, and Robert Roberts put in a grueling week trying to soothe the ruffled feelings of businessmen who had been held up in transit, and companies whose products had spoiled when the swift-moving strips had been halted for the shakedown.

  Rumors began to drift out, rumors that there was an alien from the stars at large, that Federal Security was waging a vast underground battle to capture him before the news broke out. Telecasts buzzed with “it was alleged” and “unconfirmed reports say." The tension mounted daily. Bit by bit, carefully sifted crumbs of informat
ion were dropped into the minds of the Psi-Highs who were still in the alien’s path, and all around the alien’s path. Long hours were spent in the headquarters suite, planning and coordinating the pattern. But in the end, it was a pattern well chosen and worth the effort, for it was soon evident that the alien was heading for the great eastern metropolitan area which surrounded the capital city as though he were drawn to the lodestone rock.

  No attempt was made to contact him; quite the contrary. All the alien’s overtures yielded him no response other than futile attempts at shielding; no analysis of any contact was even attempted, and this knowledge was planted so that the alien was sure to learn it. Warnings of traps were planted in his path, “secret” knowledge of closing dragnets and carefully devised Psi-High weapons to be used against him. Occasionally such warnings were followed by abortive raids, always either too early to meet him or too late, always carried out by psi-negative Security men who had no more idea what they were doing than the man in the moon. But one by one, key facts were planted, pointing always in one direction, and always the alien moved toward the headquarters area.

  Paul Faircloth and Jean Sanders seldom left the hotel even for a few minutes. Their job was to keep the pattern moving, and to plot out their individual tactics quite apart from each other. It was wearing; as the tension mounted, both of them grew more haggard. Paul had not found time to shave in a week, and there were dark circles under the girl’s eyes. Much of the time she just sat, tense, listening, waiting; other times she helped him work as he fed data into the field computer squatting in the suite. But even in the tension and exhaustion of the work, neither of them could forget the simple, awful fact that Paul Faircloth had been identified as a Psi-High, and that somehow, they would have to rearrange all the plans they had had for the future.

  Each morning they spread the reports out on the table before them. “Closer,’' Paul said one day. “And it’s on his own volition. He hasn’t been pushed. In fact, he’s been left out in the cold and he doesn’t seem to like it.”

  The girl nodded, and glanced at the papers. “He’s definitely trying to ask questions, now, when he contacts. Kams’ call last night showed that better than any other. And of course Karas didn’t know any answers.”

  Faircloth nodded. “None of them know the answers. That’s the beauty of it. Try as he will, he doesn’t get anywhere."

  “Not yet.” The girl rose, walking across the room. “Paul, I'm afraid. We’re shooting in the dark. We don’t know what we’re fighting against.”

  “Are you sorry you’re in on it?"

  "Oh, no I” She turned around, her face stricken. “It’s not that. It’s just—” His mind was suddenly filled with shadows, impressions struggling to get through, impressions that would make the use of words ridiculous. "Oh, Paul, I’m afraid for you, for both of us. If anything should happen—” “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “But what about us? If something goes wrong—Roberts knows about you—”

  “I’d rather Roberts knew than Ben Towne.”

  The girl’s eyes were wide with fright. She seemed so small and helpless. “But we shouldn’t be together! Oh, Paul, why did Roberts have to find out? Why did anyone have to find out?” And then she was sobbing in his arms, and he held her close, trying to comfort her.

  “Jeannie,” he murmured. “This just doesn’t do any good.” “But it’s so unfair! Why shouldn’t I be allowed to marry you if I want to?”

  “You know why as well as I do. Because people are afraid of us. There’s nothing we can do about it, that’s just the way people are. They’re always afraid of people who seem to threaten the way things have always been. So they passed the laws, and they think they’re right.”

  “Ben Towne thinks they’re rightl” she burst out scornfully. Her tears were hot on his cheek.

  “Towne pushed the laws through, but he couldn’t have done it alone. People are afraid of someone carrying a single psi-positive gene, like you and me. What would they do if the gene were doubled? How could we tell what our children would be like? Look, Jeannie, think1 You’re just now learning how to use your psi-powers, and look what you’re doingl You can almost get through to me, and I’ve had no formal training at all. I’ve been underground, just training myself as best I could. You’ve almost reached your limit. Dr. Abrams says you’ll have almost complete control in five years, and I could too, with the proper training. What would our children be like, with the psi-factor on both sides?”

  “Well, what would be wrong with it?” The girl was fighting back the tears. “Are we such monsters? Have we done anything so terrible that we have to be caged like animals and kept under control like criminals?”

  Paul shook his head. “People fear anything different, and they only know what they’ve been told. Ben Towne has been a vicious enemy, and enough people believe him to give him tremendous power. And there’s not one thing we can do about it.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at her face with it. “It doesn’t even pay to think about it, right now. We’ve got a job to do, Jeannie. It might be the most important thing the Psi-Highs have ever tried to do. We can’t flop on this job.”

  “But Towne will just turn it against us.”

  “Not if we work it right, he won’t. And I’ve got a hunch that we’re working it right.”

  X

  When it seemed that the strike-point could only be hours away, the visiphone buzzed and Roberts’ worried face appeared on the screen.

  “Paul,” he said sharply, “there are some bad rumors around. I think we’re in trouble.”

  Paul cursed. “What kind of rumors?”

  “AH kinds,” said Roberts sourly. “They’re saying the hunt for the alien is a fraud, that nobody is doing anything at all about it. There were a couple of out-and-out charges that Psi-Highs are teaming up with the alien to make an attempt on the government.”

  “Moon of Mars, can’t somebody put the lid on that man?” “That wasn’t even Towne’s work. It was some Isolationist senator on One of their propaganda shows. There’s talk that the Liberals are purposely blocking an investigation of the Hoffman Center and their Psi-High program, and the President is out on a limb now that might break off any minute. I think Ben Towne is planning a direct confrontation, and that means we’re running out of time. You know that Congress hasn’t been joined into two solid political parties for over two hundred years, but it’s beginning to happen now, and it could be a bloody battle. If Towne can get the Civil Rights Party to swing their votes away from the President, it could force a general election.”

  “Who’s the leader of the Civil Rights men?” Faircloth’s voice was sharp.

  “That’s just the thing. It has been Mike Veriday. His son Is a Psi-High, but his political stock has taken an awful nosedive since this rumor campaign started. The poUs have got him trailing Kingsley from Kentucky by thirteen percent and losing ground fast. Now Kingsley, it seems, is in some unpleasant financial trouble, and some of Towne’s old cronies in the Senate have offered to clear him of some nasty charges if he plays along.” He paused for a long moment. “We haven’t got much time, Paul.”

  “Well, I hope we don’t need much. But I think you can call in as many of our men as you need to. If things get too hot, list Jean and me as fugitives and throw out a dragnet for us. Because I think we’ll be working very much outside the law in another day or so.”

  Roberts blinked at him. “Better tell me what you’re planning, Paul.”

  “I think the less you know about it the better. Just one thing, though. You remember Eagle Rock? The place we built up in the Adirondacks that summer when we were in college? Put three men at a number where I can reach them, and give them the location of Eagle Rock. Then tell them

  to stand by with a fast jet scooter. Got that? And don’t let this leak, no matter what happens." v

  “I wish you’d tell me—”

  “We’re fighting for our lives now, Bob. And for every Psi-High in the count
ry. I can’t tell you a thing more.”

  Roberts nodded, then shrugged helplessly. “Eagle Rock," he said. "You can count on it.”

  Paul flipped the set off and winked at Jean. Together they settled back to wait for the alien to make his last contact.

  XI

  He struck at ten o’clock that evening, with a ferocity beyond their worst expectations.

  They had known that he was near. The reports had come in, and they had plotted and calculated his pathway, and waited. It was only a matter of time. The carefully planted information built a tangled, devious circle with a single Psi-High individual in the center.

  Jean Sanders.

  It had to be Jean. Paul hated it, he'wished it could be he, that somehow he could take the blow and shield her, but Jean Sanders was the only possible person to bait the trap. Her psi-powers had been developed carefully and painstakingly for years under the care of Dr. Reuben Abrams and his staff at the Hoffman Medical Center. A Psi-High individual was helpless to use his powers without training; just as a child was trained through long, grueling years to use his ordinary mental faculties of thought and perception and logic, a psi-positive mind required training to control its powers of extrasensory perception and psychokinetic control, if its powers were ever to be used.

  Paul knew that all too well. He too was Psi-High, but he had not even known it for years. He had not realized, in his teens, when he had plagued and baited the two Psi-High boys in his high school class, that there might be a time factor in psi-positive development. Other Psi-Highs showec the signs of abnormal sensory apparatus at the age of one or three, or seven; invariably the schools spotted them, testec them, registered them, and sent them out into a life of fea and suspicion and hatred. They were considered freaks, the more dangerous because there was no physical identification that could be used to separate them from ordinary human beings. And certain men had recognized the power waiting for the man who took advantage of the people’s fears. Ambition is blinding; certain men could see the potential danger, real or imaginary, that might arise if Psi-High minds were to work their way into the government, into law or the judiciary. But Psi-High minds matured at different ages, and at different times. And some, like Paul Faircloth, slipped through the barrage of testing undetected, only to discover later that it really wasn’t the backs of the cards they Were reading at all, but the minds of their opponents that were holding the cards.