“Great,” Malone said. “Of course, I could have got myself killed taking these lessons—”
“We were watching you,” Burris said. “If anything had happened, we’d have been right on the spot.”
“In time to bury the body,” Malone said. “I think that’s very thoughtful of you.”
“We would have arrived in time to save you,” Burris said. “Don’t quibble. You’re alive, aren’t you?”
“Well,” Malone said slowly, “if you’re not sure, I don’t know how I can convince you.”
“There,” Burris said triumphantly. “You see?”
Malone sighed wearily. “Okay,” he said. “So you sent me out to find a telepath and to prove to me that there were such things. And I did. And then what happened?”
“You had a year,” Burris said, “to get used to the idea of somebody reading your mind.”
“Thanks,” Malone said. “Of course, I didn’t know it was you.”
“It was Her Majesty too,” Burris said. “Everybody.”
“Good old Malone,” Malone said. “The human peep-show.”
“Now, that’s what we mean,” Sir Lewis broke in. “Subconsciously, you disliked the idea of leaving your thoughts bare to anyone, even a sweet little old lady. To some extent, you still do. But that will pass.”
“Goody,” Malone said.
“The residue is simply not important,” Sir Lewis went on. “Your telepathic talents prove that.”
“Oh, fine,” Malone said. “Here I am reading minds and teleporting and all sorts of things. What will the boys back at Headquarters think now?”
“We’ll get to that,” Burris said. “But that first case did one more thing for you. Because you didn’t like the idea of leaving your mind open, you began to develop a shield. That allowed you some sort of mental privacy.”
“And then,” Malone said, “I met Mike Fueyo and his little gang of teleporting juvenile delinquents.”
“So that you could develop a psionic ability of your own,” Burris said. “That completed your acceptance. But it took a threat to solidify that shield. That was step three. When you discovered your mind was being tampered with—”
“The shield started growing stronger,” Malone said. “Sure. Her Majesty told me that, though she didn’t know why.”
“Right,” Burris said.
“But, wait a minute,” Malone said. “How could I do all that without knowing it? How would I know that some of my thoughts were safe behind a shield if I didn’t know the shield existed and couldn’t even tell if my mind were being read?” He paused. “Does that make sense?” he asked.
“It does,” Burris said, “but it shouldn’t.”
“What?” Malone said.
“Two years ago, you had the answer to that one,” Burris said. “Dr. O’Connor’s machine. Remember why it did detect when a person’s mind was being read?”
“Oh,” Malone said. “Oh, sure. He said that any human being would know, subconsciously, whether his mind was being read.”
“He did, indeed,” Burris said. “And then we came to the fourth step: to put you in rapport with some psionicist who could teach you how to control the shield, how to raise and lower it, you might say. To learn to accept other thoughts, as well as reject them. To learn to accept your full telepathic talent. That was Lou’s job.”
“Lou’s … job?” Malone said. He felt his own shield go up. The thoughts behind it weren’t pleasant. Lou had been … well, hired to stay with him. She had pretended to like him; it was part of her job.
That was perfectly clear now.
Horribly clear.
“You are now on your way,” Sir Lewis said, “to being a real psionicist.”
“Fine,” Malone said dully. “But why me? Why not, oh, Wolfe Wolf? I’d think he’d have a better chance than I would.”
“My secretary,” Burris said, “has talents enough of his own. But you, you’re something brand-new. It’s wonderful, Malone. It’s exciting.”
“It’s a new taste thrill,” Malone murmured. “Try Bon-Ton B-Complex Bolsters. Learn to eat your blanket as well as sleep with it.”
“What?” Burris said.
“Never mind,” Malone said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“But I—”
“I know you wouldn’t,” Malone said, “because I don’t.”
Sir Lewis cleared his throat “My dear boy,” he said, “you represent a breakthrough. You are an adult.”
“That,” Malone said testily, “is not news.”
“But you are a telepathic adult,” Sir Lewis said. “Many of them are capable of developing it into a useful ability. Children who have the talent may accidentally develop the ability to use it, but that almost invariably results in insanity. Without proper guidance, a child is no more capable of handling the variety of impressions it receives from adult minds than it is capable of understanding a complex piece of modern music. The effort to make a coherent whole out of the impression overstrains the mind, so to speak, and the damage is permanent.”
“So here I am,” Malone said, “and I’m not nuts. At least I don’t think I’m nuts.”
“Because you are an adult,” Sir Lewis went on. “Telepathy seems to be almost impossible to develop in an adult, even difficult to test for it. A child may be tested comparatively simply; an adult, seldom or never.”
He paused to relight his pipe.
“However,” he went on, “the Psychical Research Society’s executive board discovered a method of bringing out the ability in a talented child as far back as 1931. All of us who are sane telepaths today owe our ability to that process, which was applied to us, in each case, before the age of sixteen.”
“How about me?” Malone said.
“You,” Sir Lewis said, “are the first adult ever to learn the use of psionic powers from scratch.”
“Oh,” Malone said. “And that’s why Mike Fueyo, for instance, could learn to teleport, though his older sister couldn’t.”
“Mike was an experiment,” Sir Lewis said. “We decided to teach him teleportation without teaching him telepathy. You saw what happened.”
“Sure I did,” Malone said. “I had to stop it.”
“We were forced to make you stop him,” Sir Lewis said. “But we also let him teach you his abilities.”
“So I’m an experiment,” Malone said.
“A successful experiment,” Sir Lewis added.
“Well,” Malone said dully, “bully for me.”
“Don’t feel that way,” Sir Lewis said. “We have—”
He stopped suddenly, and glanced at the others. Burris and Lou stood up, and Sir Lewis followed them.
“Sorry,” Sir Lewis said in a different tone. “There’s something important that we must take care of. Something quite urgent, I’m afraid.”
“You can go on home, Malone,” Burris said. “We’ll talk later, but right now there’s a crisis coming and we’ve got to help. Leave the car. I’ll take care of it.”
“Sure,” Malone said, without moving.
Lou said, “Ken—” and stopped. Then the three of them turned and started up the long, curving staircase that led to the upstairs rooms.
Malone sat in the Morris chair for several long minutes, wishing that he were dead. Nobody made a sound. He rubbed his hands over the soft leather and tried to tell himself that he was lucky, and talented, and successful.
But he didn’t care.
He closed his eyes at last, and took a deep breath.
Then he vanished.
CHAPTER 16
Two hours passed, somehow. Bourbon and soda helped them pass, Malone discovered; he drank two highballs slowly, trying not to think about anything, and kept staring around at the walls of his apartment without really seeing anything. He felt terrible.
He made himself a third bourbon and soda and started in on it. Maybe this one would make him feel better. Maybe, he thought, he ought to break out the cigars and celebrate.
But there didn�
��t seem to be very much to celebrate, somehow.
He felt like a guinea pig being congratulated on having successfully resisted a germ during an experiment.
He drank some more of the bourbon and soda. Guinea pigs didn’t drink bourbon and soda, he told himself. He was better off than a guinea pig. He was happier than a guinea pig. But he couldn’t imagine any guinea pig in the world, no matter how heartbroken, feeling any worse than Kenneth J. Malone.
He looked up. There was another guinea pig in the room.
Then he frowned. She wasn’t a guinea pig. She was one off the experimenters. She was the one the guinea pig was supposed to fall in love with, so the guinea pig could be nice and telepathic and all the other experimenters could congratulate themselves. But whoever heard of a scientist falling in love with a guinea pig? It was fate. And fate was awful. Malone had often suspected it, but now he was sure. Now he saw things from the guinea pig’s side, and fate was terrible.
“But Ken,” the experimenter said. “It isn’t like that at all.”
“It is, too,” Malone said. “It’s even worse, but that’ll have to wait. When I have some more to drink it will get worse. Watch and see.”
“But Ken—” Lou hesitated, and then went on. “Don’t feel sad about being an experiment. We’re all experiments.”
“I’m the guinea pig,” Malone said. “I’m the only guinea pig. You said so.”
“No, Ken,” she said. “Remember, all of us in the PRS got early training when it was new and untried. Some of those methods weren’t as good as we now have them; that’s why a man like your boss sometimes tends to have a little trouble.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “But I’m your guinea pig. You made me dance through hoops and do tricks and everything just for an experiment. That’s what.” He took another swallow of his drink. “See?” he said. “It’s getting worse already.”
“No, it’s not,” Lou said. “It’s getting better, if you’ll only listen. I wasn’t given this job, Ken. I volunteered for it.”
“That isn’t any better,” Malone said morosely.
“I volunteered because I—because I liked you,” Lou said. “Because I wanted to work with you, wanted to be with you.”
“It’s more experimenting,” Malone said flatly. “More guinea-pigging around.”
“It isn’t, Ken,” Lou said. “Believe me. Look into my mind. Believe me.”
Malone tried. A second passed…
And then a long time passed, without any words at all.
“Well, well,” Malone said at last. “If this is the life of a guinea pig, I’m all for it.”
“I’m all for guinea pigs’ rights,” Lou said. “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Me.”
“Agreed,” Malone said. “How about that crisis, by the way? Are you going to have to leave suddenly again?”
Lou stretched lazily on the couch. “That’s all over with, thank God,” she said. “We had to get our agent out of Miami Beach, and cover his tracks at the same time.”
“Tricky,” Malone said.
“Very,” Lou said.
“But—” Malone blinked. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Your agent? You mean you had Governor Flarion killed?”
Lou nodded soberly. “We had to,” she said. “That paranoid mind of his had built up a shield we simply couldn’t get through. He had plans for making himself president, you know—and all the terrifying potentialities of an embryonic Hitler.” She grimaced. “We don’t like being forced to kill,” she said, “but sometimes we’ve got to.”
Malone thought of his own .44 Magnum, and the times he had used it, and nodded very slowly.
“There are still a couple of questions, though,” he said. “For instance, there’s that trip to Russia. Why did you make it? Was it your father?”
“Of course it was,” Lou said. “We had to get him back in and make sure he was safe.”
“You mean that Vasili Garbitsch is a PSR member?” Malone said, stunned.
“Well, really,” Lou said. “Did you think my father would really be a spy? We had to get him back to Russia; he was needed for work in the Kremlin. That’s why we nudged Boyd into making the arrest.”
“And the others?” Malone said. “Brubitsch and Borbitsch?”
“Real spies,” Lou said. “Bad ones, but real. Any more questions?”
“Some,” Malone said. “Were you kidding about that drink in Moscow?”
She shook her head. “I wish I had been,” she said. “But I was concentrating on Petkoff, who didn’t know a thing about the drugged drink. I didn’t catch anything else until after I’d swallowed it. And then it was too late.”
“Good old Petkoff,” Malone said. “Always helpful. But he was right about one thing, anyway.”
“What?” Lou said.
“The FBI,” Malone said. “He told us it was a secret police organization. And, by God, in a way it is!”
Lou grinned. Malone started to laugh outright. They found themselves very close and the laughter stopped, and there was some more time without words. When Malone broke free, he had a suddenly sobered expression on his face.
“Hey,” he said. “What about Tom Boyd? He knows a lot but he hasn’t got any talents, as far as I know, and—”
“He’ll be all right,” Lou said. “Andrew and the others have thought of that.”
“But he knows an awful lot about the evidence I dug up.”
“Andrew will give him a cover-up explanation they’re working out,” Lou said. “That will convince Boyd there’s nothing more to worry about. Of course, we may have to change his mind about a few things, but we can do that, probably through you, since you know him best. There’s nothing for you to worry over, Ken. Nothing at all.”
“Good,” Malone said. He leaned over and kissed her. “Because I’m not in the least worried.”
Lou sighed deeply, looking off into space.
“Luba Malone,” she said. “It sounds nice. And, after all, my mother was Irish. At least it sounds better than Garbitsch.”
“What doesn’t?” Malone said automatically. Then he blinked. “Hey, I’m Malone!” he said. “How could you be Malone?”
“Me?” Lou said. She caroled happily. “I’m Malone because I love you, love you with all my heart.”
“That,” Malone said, “does it. A woman after my own heart.”
Lou made a low curtsy.
“And a woman of grace and breeding,” Malone said. “Eftsoons, if that means anything.”
“You know,” Lou said, “I like you even better when you’re being Sir Kenneth. Especially when you’re talking to yourself.”
“My innate gallantry and all my good qualities come out,” Malone said.
“Yes,” Lou said. “Indeed they do. All over the place. It’s nice to go back to Elizabethan times, anyhow, in the middle of all these troubles.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Malone said. “There’s always been trouble. In the Middle Ages, it was witches. In the Seventeenth Century, it was demons. In the Nineteenth it was revolutions. In—”
Lou cut him off with a kiss. When she broke away Malone raised his eyebrows.
“I prithee,” he said, “interrupt me not. I am developing a scheme of philosophy. There have always been troubles. In the 1890’s there was a Depression and panic, and the Spanish-American War—”
“All right, Sirrah,” Lou said. “And then what?”
“Let’s see,” Malone said, reverting to 1973 for a second. “In 1903 there was the airplane, and troubles abroad.”
“Yes?” Lou said. “Do go on, Sirrah. Your liege awaits your slightest word.”
“Hmm,” Malone said.
“That, Milord, was a very slight word indeed,” Lou said. “What’s after 1903?”
Malone smiled and went back to the days of the First Elizabeth happily.
“In 1914, it was enemy aliens,” said Sir Kenneth Malone.
A WORLD BY THE TALE (1963)
Exactly three minutes after the
Galactic left the New York apartment of Professor John Hamish McLeod, Ph.D., Sc.D., a squad of U.B.I. men pushed their way into it.
McLeod heard the door chime, opened the door, and had to back up as eight men crowded in. The one in the lead flashed a fancily engraved ID card and said: “Union Bureau of Investigation. You’re Professor Mac-Lee-Odd.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No,” McLeod said flatly, “I am not. I never heard of such a name.” He waited while the U.B.I. man blinked once, then added: “If you are looking for Professor MuhCloud, I’m he.” It always irritated him when people mispronounced his name, and in this case there was no excuse for it.
“All right, Professor McLeod,” said the U.B.I. agent, pronouncing it properly this time, “however you want it. Mind if we ask you a few questions?”
McLeod stared at him for half a second. Eight men, all of them under thirty-five, in top physical condition. He was fifteen years older than the oldest and had confined his exercise, in the words of Chauncey de Pew, to “acting as pallbearer for my friends who take exercise.” Not that he was really in poor shape, but he certainly couldn’t have argued with eight men like these.
“Come in,” he said calmly, waving them into the apartment.
Six of them entered. The other two stayed outside in the hall.
Five of the six remained standing. The leader took the chair that McLeod offered him.
“What are your questions, Mr. Jackson?” McLeod asked.
Jackson looked very slightly surprised, as if he were not used to having people read the name on his card during the short time he allowed them to see it. The expression vanished almost instantaneously. “Professor,” he said, “we’d like to know what subjects you discussed with the Galactic who just left.”
McLeod allowed himself to relax back in his chair. “Let me ask you two questions, Mr. Jackson. One: What the hell business is it of yours? Two: Why do you ask me when you already know?”
Again there was only a flicker of expression over Jackson’s face. “Professor McLeod, we are concerned about the welfare of the human race. Your…uh…co-operation is requested.”
“You don’t have to come barging in here with an armed squad just to ask my co-operation,” McLeod said. “What do you want to know?”
The Second Randall Garrett Megapack Page 113
