“Very sad,” Dr. O’Connor said. “Six months ago, at the age of fifteen, the boy simply died. He simply—gave up, and died.”
“Gave up?”
“That was as good an explanation as our medical department was able to provide, Mr. Burris. There was some malfunction—but—we like to say that he simply gave up. Living became too difficult for him.”
“All right,” Burris said after a pause. “This telepath of yours is dead, and there aren’t any more where he came from. Or if there are, you don’t know how to look for them. All right. But to get back to this machine of yours: it couldn’t detect the boy’s ability?”
Dr. O’Connor shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not. We’ve worked hard on that problem at Westinghouse, Mr. Burris, but we haven’t yet been able to find a method of actually detecting telepaths.”
“But you can detect—”
“That’s right,” Dr. O’Connor said. “We can detect the fact that a man’s mind is being read.” He stopped, and his face became suddenly morose. When he spoke again, he sounded guilty, as if he were making an admission that pained him. “Of course, Mr. Burris, there’s nothing we can do about a man’s mind being read. Nothing whatever.” He essayed a grin that didn’t look very healthy. “But at least,” he said, “you know you’re being spied on.”
Burris grimaced. There was a little silence while Dr. O’Connor stroked the metal box meditatively, as if it were the head of his beloved.
At last, Burris said: “Dr. O’Connor, how sure can you be of all this?”
The look he received made all the previous conversation seem as warm and friendly as a Christmas party by comparison. It was a look that froze the air of the room into a solid chunk, Malone thought, a chunk you could have chipped pieces from, for souvenirs, later, when Dr. O’Connor had gone and you could get into the room without any danger of being quick-frozen by the man’s unfriendly eye.
“Mr. Burris,” Dr. O’Connor said in a voice that matched the temperature of his gaze, “please. Remember our slogan.”
* * * *
Malone sighed. He fished in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, found one, and extracted a single cigarette. He stuck it in his mouth and started fishing in various pockets for his lighter.
He sighed again. Perfectly honestly, he preferred cigars, a habit he’d acquired from the days when he’d filched them from his father’s cigar- case. But his mental picture of a fearless and alert young FBI agent didn’t include a cigar. Somehow, remembering his father as neither fearless nor, exactly, alert—anyway, not the way the movies and the TV screens liked to picture the words—he had the impression that cigars looked out of place on FBI agents.
And it was, in any case, a small sacrifice to make. He found his lighter and shielded it from the brisk wind. He looked out over water at the Jefferson Memorial, and was surprised that he’d managed to walk as far as he had. Then he stopped thinking about walking, and took a puff of his cigarette, and forced himself to think about the job in hand.
Naturally, the Westinghouse gadget had been declared Ultra Top Secret as soon as it had been worked out. Virtually everything was, these days. And the whole group involved in the machine and its workings had been transferred without delay to the United States Laboratories out in Yucca Flats, Nevada.
Out there in the desert, there just wasn’t much to do, Malone supposed, except to play with the machine. And, of course, look at the scenery. But when you’ve seen one desert, Malone thought confusedly, you’ve seen them all.
So, the scientists ran experiments on the machine, and they made a discovery of a kind they hadn’t been looking for.
Somebody, they discovered, was picking the brains of the scientists there.
Not the brains of the people working with the telepathy machine.
And not the brains of the people working on the several other Earth- limited projects at Yucca Flats.
They’d been reading the minds of some of the scientists working on the new and highly classified non-rocket space drive.
In other words, the Yucca Flats plant was infested with a telepathic spy. And how do you go about finding a telepath? Malone sighed. Spies that got information in any of the usual ways were tough enough to locate. A telepathic spy was a lot tougher proposition.
Well, one thing about Andrew J. Burris. He had an answer for everything. Malone thought of what his chief had said: “It takes a thief to catch a thief. And if the Westinghouse machine won’t locate a telepathic spy, I know what will.”
“What?” Malone had asked.
“It’s simple,” Burris had said. “Another telepath. There has to be one around somewhere. Westinghouse did have one, after all, and the Russians still have one. Malone, that’s your job: go out and find me a telepath.”
Burris had an answer for everything, all right, Malone thought. But he couldn’t see where the answer did him very much good. After all, if it takes a telepath to catch a telepath, how do you catch the telepath you’re going to use to catch the first telepath?
Malone ran that through his mind again, and then gave it up. It sounded as if it should have made sense, somehow, but it just didn’t, and that was all there was to that.
He dropped his cigarette to the ground and mashed it out with the toe of his shoe. Then he looked up.
Out there, over the water, was the Jefferson Memorial. It stood, white in the floodlights, beautiful and untouchable in the darkness. Malone stared at it. What would Thomas Jefferson have done in a crisis like this?
Jefferson, he told himself without much conviction, would have been just as confused as he was.
But he’d have had to find a telepath, Malone thought. Malone determined that he would do likewise, If Thomas Jefferson could do it, the least he, Malone, could do was to give it a good try.
There was only one little problem:
Where, Malone thought, do I start looking?
CHAPTER 2
Early the next morning, Malone awoke on a plane, heading across the continent toward Nevada. He had gone home to sleep, and he’d had to wake up to get on the plane, and now here he was, waking up again. It seemed, somehow, like a vicious circle.
The engines hummed gently as they pushed the big ship through the middle stratosphere’s thinly distributed molecules. Malone looked out at the purple-dark sky and set himself to think out his problem again.
He was still mulling things over when the ship lowered its landing gear and rolled to a stop on the big field near Yucca Flats. Malone sighed and climbed slowly out of his seat. There was a car waiting for him at the airfield, though, and that seemed to presage a smooth time; Malone remembered calling Dr. O’Connor the night before, and congratulated himself on his foresight.
Unfortunately, when he reached the main gate of the high double fence that surrounded the more than ninety square miles of United States Laboratories, he found out that entrance into that sanctum sanctorum of Security wasn’t as easy as he’d imagined—not even for an FBI man. His credentials were checked with the kind of minute care Malone had always thought people reserved for disputed art masterpieces, and it was with a great show of reluctance that the Special Security guards passed him inside as far as the office of the Chief Security Officer.
There, the Chief Security Officer himself, a man who could have doubled for Torquemada, eyed Malone with ill-concealed suspicion while he called Burris at FBI headquarters back in Washington.
Burris identified Malone on the video screen and the Chief Security Officer, looking faintly disappointed, stamped the agent’s pass and thanked the FBI chief. Malone had the run of the place.
Then he had to find a courier jeep. The Westinghouse division, it seemed, was a good two miles away.
As Malone knew perfectly well, the main portion of the entire Yucca Flats area was devoted solely to research on the new space drive which was expected to make the rocket as obsolete as the blunderbuss—at least as far as space travel was concerned. Not, Malone thought uneasily, that the blu
nderbuss had ever been used for space travel, but—
He got off the subject hurriedly. The jeep whizzed by buildings, most of them devoted to aspects of the non-rocket drive. The other projects based at Yucca Flats had to share what space was left—and that included, of course, the Westinghouse research project.
It turned out to be a single, rather small white building with a fence around it. The fence bothered Malone a little, but there was no need to worry; this time he was introduced at once into Dr. O’Connor’s office. It was paneled in wallpaper manufactured to look like pine, and the telepathy expert sat behind a large black desk bigger than any Malone had ever seen in the FBI offices. There wasn’t a scrap of paper on the desk; its surface was smooth and shiny, and behind it the nearly transparent Dr. Thomas O’Connor was close to invisible.
He looked, in person, just about the same as he’d looked on the FBI tapes. Malone closed the door of the office behind him, looked for a chair and didn’t find one. In Dr. O’Connor’s office, it was perfectly obvious, Dr. O’Connor sat down. You stood, and were uncomfortable.
Malone took off his hat. He reached across the desk to shake hands with the telepathy expert, and Dr. O’Connor gave him a limp fragile paw. “Thanks for giving me a little time,” Malone said. “I really appreciate it.” He smiled across the desk. His feet were already beginning to hurt.
“Not at all,” Dr. O’Connor said, returning the smile with one of his own special quick-frozen brand. “I realize how important FBI work is to all of us, Mr. Malone. What can I do to help you?”
Malone shifted his feet. “I’m afraid I wasn’t very specific on the phone last night,” he said. “It wasn’t anything I wanted to discuss over a line that might have been tapped. You see, I’m on the telepathy case.”
Dr. O’Connor’s eyes widened the merest trifle. “I see,” he said. “Well, I’ll certainly do everything I can to help you.”
“Fine,” Malone said. “Let’s get right down to business, then. The first thing I want to ask you about is this detector of yours. I understand it’s too big to carry around—but how about making a smaller model?”
“Smaller?” Dr. O’Connor permitted himself a ghostly chuckle. “I’m afraid that isn’t possible, Mr. Malone. I would be happy to let you have a small model of the machine if we had one available—more than happy. I would like to see such a machine myself, as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, Mr. Malone—”
“There just isn’t one, right?” Malone said.
“Correct,” Dr. O’Connor said. “And there are a few other factors. In the first place, the person being analyzed has to be in a specially shielded room, such as is used in encephalographic analysis. Otherwise, the mental activity of the other persons around him would interfere with the analysis.” He frowned a little. “I could wish that we knew a bit more about psionic machines. The trouble with the present device, frankly, is that it is partly psionic and partly electronic, and we can’t be entirely sure where one part leaves off and the other begins. Very trying. Very trying indeed.”
“I’ll bet it is,” Malone said sympathetically, wishing he understood what Dr. O’Connor was talking about.
The telepathy expert sighed. “However,” he said, “we keep working at it.” Then he looked at Malone expectantly.
Malone shrugged. “Well, if I can’t carry the thing around, I guess that’s that,” he said. “But here’s the next question: do you happen to know the maximum range of a telepath? I mean: how far away can he get from another person and still read his mind?”
Dr. O’Connor frowned again. “We don’t have definite information on that, I’m afraid,” he said. “Poor little Charlie was rather difficult to work with. He was mentally incapable of cooperating in any way, you see.”
“Little Charlie?”
“Charles O’Neill was the name of the telepath we worked with,” Dr. O’Connor explained.
“I remember,” Malone said. The name had been on one of the tapes, but he just hadn’t associated “Charles O’Neill” with “Little Charlie.” He felt as if he’d been caught with his homework undone. “How did you manage to find him, anyway?” he said. Maybe, if he knew how Westinghouse had found their imbecile-telepath, he’d have some kind of clue that would enable him to find one, too. Anyhow, it was worth a try.
“It wasn’t difficult in Charlie’s case,” Dr. O’Connor said. He smiled. “The child babbled all the time, you see.”
“You mean he talked about being a telepath?”
Dr. O’Connor shook his head impatiently. “No,” he said. “Not at all. I mean that he babbled. Literally. Here: I’ve got a sample recording in my files.” He got up from his chair and went to the tall gray filing cabinet that hid in a far corner of the pine-paneled room. From a drawer he extracted a spool of common audio tape, and returned to his desk.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get full video on this,” he said, “but we didn’t feel it was necessary.” He opened a panel in the upper surface of the desk, and slipped the spool in. “If you like, there are other tapes—”
“Maybe later,” Malone said.
Dr. O’Connor nodded and pressed the playback switch at the side of the great desk. For a second the room was silent.
Then there was the hiss of empty tape, and a brisk masculine voice that overrode it:
“Westinghouse Laboratories,” it said, “sixteen April nineteen-seventy. Dr. Walker speaking. The voice you are about to hear belongs to Charles O’Neill: chronological age fourteen years, three months; mental age, approximately five years. Further data on this case will be found in the file O’Neill.”
There was a slight pause, filled with more tape hiss.
Then the voice began.
“… push the switch for record … in the park last Wednesday … and perhaps a different set of … poor kid never makes any sense in … trees and leaves all sunny with the … electronic components of the reducing stage might be … not as predictable when others are around but … to go with Sally some night in the….”
It was a childish, alto voice, gabbling in a monotone. A phrase would be spoken, the voice would hesitate for just an instant, and then another, totally disconnected phrase would come. The enunciation and pronunciation would vary from phrase to phrase, but the tone remained essentially the same, drained of all emotional content.
“… in receiving psychocerebral impulses there isn’t any … nonsense and nothing but nonsense all the … tomorrow or maybe Saturday with the girl … tube might be replaceable only if…something ought to be done for the… Saturday would be a good time for … work on the schematics tonight if….”
There was a click as the tape was turned off, and Dr. O’Connor looked up.
“It doesn’t make much sense,” Malone said. “But the kid sure has a hell of a vocabulary for an imbecile.”
“Vocabulary?” Dr. O’Connor said softly.
“That’s right,” Malone said. “Where’d an imbecile get words like ‘psychocerebral?’ I don’t think I know what that means, myself.”
“Ah,” Dr. O’Connor said. “But that’s not his vocabulary, you see. What Charlie is doing is simply repeating the thoughts of those around him. He jumps from mind to mind, simply repeating whatever he receives.” His face assumed the expression of a man remembering a bad taste in his mouth. “That’s how we found him out, Mr. Malone,” he said. “It’s rather startling to look at a blithering idiot and have him suddenly repeat the very thought that’s in your mind.”
Malone nodded unhappily. It didn’t seem as if O’Connor’s information was going to be a lot of help as far as catching a telepath was concerned. An imbecile, apparently, would give himself away if he were a telepath. But nobody else seemed to be likely to do that. And imbeciles didn’t look like very good material for catching spies with. Then he brightened. “Doctor, is it possible that the spy we’re looking for really isn’t a spy?”
“Eh?”
“I mean, suppose he’s an imbecile, too? I doubt whether an i
mbecile would really be a spy, if you see what I mean.”
Dr. O’Connor appeared to consider the notion. After a little while he said: “It is, I suppose, possible. But the readings on the machine don’t give us the same timing as they did in Charlie’s case—or even the same sort of timing.”
“I don’t quite follow you,” Malone said.
Truthfully, he felt about three miles behind. But perhaps everything would clear up soon. He hoped so. On top of everything else, his feet were now hurting a lot more.
“Perhaps if I describe one of the tests we ran,” Dr. O’Connor said, “things will be somewhat clearer.” He leaned back in his chair. Malone shifted his feet again and transferred his hat from his right to his left hand.
“We put one of our test subjects in the insulated room,” Dr. O’Connor said, “and connected him to the detector. He was to read from a book—a book that was not too common. This was, of course, to obviate the chance that some other person nearby might be reading it, or might have read it in the past. We picked The Blood is the Death by Hieronymus Melanchthon, which, as you may know, is a very rare book indeed.”
“Sure,” Malone said. He had never heard of the book, but he was, after all, willing to take Dr. O’Connor’s word for it.
The telepathy expert went on: “Our test subject read it carefully, scanning rather than skimming. Cameras recorded the movements of his eyes in order for us to tell just what he was reading at any given moment, in order to correlate what was going on in his mind with the reactions of the machine’s indicators, if you follow me.”
Malone nodded helplessly.
“At the same time,” Dr. O’Connor continued blithely, “we had Charlie in a nearby room, recording his babblings. Every so often, he would come out with quotations from The Blood is the Death, and these quotations corresponded exactly with what our test subject was reading at the time, and also corresponded with the abnormal fluctuations of the detector.”
Dr. O’Connor paused. Something, Malone realized, was expected of him. He thought of several responses and chose one. “I see,” he said.
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