Ability Quotient

by Mack Reynolds

  Bert burned him down.

  The other made a dash for a table in the room’s center. There was an old-fashioned revolver on it. Bert cut him nearly in two, and the body crashed to the floor, upsetting and crumbling a straight chair on his way down.

  Bert kept moving, the gun ever at the ready. He yelled, “Jill!”

  There was a door that would seemingly lead to a bedroom. It opened and another man came dashing in. Even at the speed with which things were developing, Bert Alshuler recognized him as one of the four who had abducted Jill Masterson. He blasted him in the belly, let the laser beam mount higher. The newcomer folded forward and collapsed to the floor.

  “Jill!” he yelled.

  A voice from the room from which his last adversary had emerged called shakily, “In here!”

  He didn’t know if she was alone. He bounced through the door, into the room’s center, swinging the gun around as he whirled. But she was alone, seated on the bed, her eyes wide.

  “How many of them in the house?” he barked.

  “Three. What’s happened?”

  “Jim Hawkins and I came to get you. Jim’s outside, covering. Come on, let’s get out of here. Close your eyes when we go through the living room. It’s messy. I’ll take your arm.”

  But she seemed rooted to where she sat. Her eyes were still round.

  As though by intuition she said, very slowly, “Jim Hawkins. Jim’s outside covering. James Hawkins. Captain James Hawkins of the Elite Service. The right hand man of… he called you Killer. Why… why you’re Killer Caine.”

  His face stiffened slightly. “My mother’s name was Alshuler. I took it to avoid… notoriety. Let’s go, Jill. I think you’re safe, but it’s just possible that there’re more of them in the vicinity.”

  “But what are you doing here? How are you connected with this whole affair?”

  He said urgently, “Listen. We don’t have time for explanations. I’m evidently in the same thing you are. Katz told me I ran up the highest Ability Quotient of all the demobilized military, so I was picked for this educational project. Let’s go.”

  But she was still staring, and there was a sick expression on her face. She said, very slowly. “Ability Quotient? You, the highest of all discharged men? The millions of them? In what field is your real greatest ability. Killer Caine?”

  PART TWO

  Chapter Ten

  In the hallway, near the door, Bert Alshuler paused, stood to one side, drew a curtain at one of the windows a bit and peered out. Jim was leaning nonchalantly on one of the porch pillars, his pistol evidently back in his belt.

  Jill said coldly, “How does one acquire a name like Killer Caine?”

  He shot her a look. “It starts as a gag. A couple of your buddies call you that once or twice for laughs.”

  He threw the power pack of his pistol and dropped it into his left pocket and brought forth a fresh one from his right jacket pocket.

  He said, “Then one day you’re in the middle of a big fire fight and just by chance the news boys have a camera on you. Not that you give a damn at the time. All you’re interested in is getting through the razzle alive. Later on, when it’s over, one of the newsmen comes over to get your name and a little interview. So he hears one of your squad call you Killer and picks it up. He uses it in the story, and a couple of months later, a magazine comes around and everybody in the company reads about it and thinks it’s very funny. Which it is… I guess.”

  He jammed the fresh power pack into the butt of the laser pistol and looked out the window again. He said, “So from then on you can’t ditch the name. You get a little teed off a couple of times and go a round with a couple of them, but it doesn’t do any good. The whole company calls you that.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “Come on, it’s clear,” he said. “Move fast and get into the back of the car. I don’t think there’s any more of them around.”

  They left the house; Jim grinned at her and said, “Boy Scouts to the rescue.”

  Her face was wan. She said, “How many of them are dead back there?”

  Bert didn’t answer He said to Jim, “Sit in the back with her and keep a lookout to the rear.”

  “Right.”

  In the car, Kenneth Kneedler was sitting where they had left him in the front seat. He was staring straight ahead, but his eyes were unseeing, glazed. He was, Bert decided, probably regretting breaking so easily.

  He started up and began retracing their route.

  Jill said, her voice empty. “But how does one go about deserving a name like that? How does one become the most decorated man of a war?”

  Jim looked at her askance from the side of his eyes, but then out the back window again, looking for pursuit.

  Bert Alshuler said, after taking a deep breath, “By accident. Usually, while doing everything you can to keep olive. Usually, while you’re scared stiff inside. Sergeant Alvin York in the First World War and Audie Murphy in the Second didn’t have decorations in mind when they did their thing. Neither did I in the Asian War.”

  He took another deep breath before going on “After that TV thing, they field commissioned me. I was just a lad but the brass likes that kind of publicity. It goes over very well back home; good for civilian morale. At any rate, a few months later somebody pulled a razzle and the company was sent in against a gook outfit that was supposed to be company strength too, but wasn’t. It was a battalion. And we were pinned down on top of a ridge and stayed pinned down for six days. They couldn’t get in to relieve us because the monsoon rains were on. So when the helio-jets finally managed to come in and run the gooks off, I was alone on top of the hill.”

  “Alone?” she said weakly.

  “Alone. With all my lieutenants and sergeants and corporals and privates, and even a chaplain and two news reporters, scattered around, all up and down that ridge. The machine gun ammunition was all gone, and all the grenades and all the mortar shells and the food and the water. We’d been holding them off with small arms fire for the past twenty-four hours. And my last man died only fifteen minutes before the relief came.”

  “So when they finally came in, complete as usual with the TV crews, you stand up, all alone, and tuck your automatic under your arm, like you were going out after rabbits or quail, and you start down the hill, still on your feet, though you’ve taken several hits. And there they are, at the foot of the ridge, taking in all the bodies, both of the company and the gooks, that are spread so thick you can hardly walk without stepping on one. So on your way down you fish a stogie cigar from your shirt pocket and stick it in your mouth and you’re awfully tired, but you’re still on your feet. And when you come up on the TV camera crew, in their natty, ironed-that-morning outfits, the newsman on the mike says, ‘It’s Killer Caine. The sole survivor is Captain Killer Caine.’ And you walk up to him real close and look into his face and say, ‘Got a match, friend?’ ”

  Bert Alshuler took a deep breath. “Possibly you saw that bit of asinine bravado on the TV screen at the time. I understand it was rather universally shown. I don’t even remember it happening. I don’t remember anything of those last couple of days. I was probably in semi-shock.”

  Jill shook her head. “I never watched the war propaganda. I was a pacifist.”

  “So was I,” Bert said wearily. “Back when they grabbed me and stuck me in. They didn’t accept whatever plea I made and I was inducted.”

  Jim Hawkins chuckled at that.

  Bert looked over his shoulder at him. “What’s so funny, you grinning hyena? You probably volunteered.”

  Jim chortled. “You, a pacifist.”

  Bert wound it up to Jill. “So in a week or so, when they decided to create the Elite Service, they bounced me up to major and I was in command. And Jim, here, my second. That’s where most of the notoriety came in, when the Elite Service was exposed a few times in some of the anti-war left wing newspapers and magazines.”

  Jill looked at Jim Hawkins, next to her. “W
hy didn’t you bother to change you name and undergo plastic surgery?”

  Jim grinned in put-on modesty. “Who ever hears of the third most highly decorated man to come out of a war? Or the second, for that matter. Who took the second Bert?”

  “Darned if I know. I didn’t even know you were third.”

  “My old buddy,” Jim said.

  They had come to the dispatcher at the entry to the underground of the university city. Bert brought the electro-steamer to a halt, threw it off manual and said into the screen, “Administration Building.”

  The auto-drive took over and they eased forward and into the traffic.

  For the first time since they had left the house in which Jill had been held, Kenneth Kneedler spoke up. He said, “Where are you taking me? I demand to be released.”

  Jim chuckled. He seemed to be in a chuckling mood, Bert thought sourly. They had about as much reason to be amused as they did to take Holy Orders.

  Jim said, his voice friendly, “We’re going some place where we can bounce you around a little more, Golden Boy There’s a lot of talking that has to be done.”

  “I won’t stand for this,” Kneedler blurted. “In the data banks is the information that on your Identity Card this vehicle was rented and went from the building in which you reside to that house in the off-skirts. I don’t know what went on there, but I am convinced that criminal action took place. You will be apprehended.”

  “Three bits of criminal action took place,” Bert put in flatly. “There are three dead men in that house.”

  Jill flinched.

  But Jim said cheerfully, “And that’s why we’re going to have to find out what’s going on, Golden Boy.”

  “You’ll get nothing more from me!”

  Jim said, wonderingly, “What is it about being a professor that doesn’t require brains? You didn’t seem to bother to listen to Bert telling how you acquire a handle like Killer Caine. Four men are dead in the fun and games we’ve been having these past few hours, Professor. Do you think one more makes any difference to us? We’ve got to get out from under, whatever way we can. You’re a witness, right? Maybe it’ll turn out we can’t afford a witness. You never know.”

  The assistant professor seemed to shrink down into his clothes and some of his newly regained courage disappeared.

  Jill said, “I can’t allow this.”

  Bert said, “Take it easy, Jill. We’ve got to find out what’s going on.”

  “Miss Masterson,” she said.

  Bert looked at her emptily. “I went into that place to rescue you, Miss Masterson, not to have the fun of exposing myself to three trigger-happy lads. In my time I’ve run into men who get their jollies out of killing. Most of them passed from the scene fairly quickly. I am still alive.”

  “I am sure that all your motivations are not altruistic, Killer Cain.”

  He was bitter. “I can’t even figure out what my motivations are,” he said. “I haven’t got the vaguest idea of what’s going on. I haven’t the vaguest idea of why those men grabbed you.”

  “Through my own silliness.”

  Jim said, “Here we are,” as they emerged into the metro beneath the Administration Building.

  When they had stopped, Bert said flatly, “We’re going up to my suite to have a talk. As Jim pointed out, he and I are in the soup, and not through our own desire. The only way we can get out, if we can, is through cooperation with you two. Neither of us are particularly noble, we wouldn’t be alive today if we were. So we go up to my suite and talk a bit. If you object, Professor Kneedler?”

  “I’ll go with you. I realize that you men are desperadoes.”

  “Now, that’s a nice turn of phrase,” Jim said.

  Jill glared at him. “I hate you,” she said, dripping cold contempt.

  Jim said, trying to be light, but an apology there, “And I love you, Sweetie Pie.”

  She snorted.

  Bert led the way from the car to the exclusive elevator that led to the uppermost reaches of the Administration Building.

  At Suite G he turned to Jill. “You must be very upset. Do you want to go to your own apartment and, well, clean up and rest, or whatever?”

  She looked at him coolly. “I refuse to leave you here with this unfortunate man.” She looked at Kneedler. “You are Professor…?”

  “Kneedler,” the teacher said. He was in a state of exhaustion.

  “Kay,” Bert said. “Let’s all go in and find out what’s going on.”

  In the living room, Jill looked at Jim, dwelling on the arm he had in a black sling. His face was on the pale side.

  She said, “You’ve been hurt.”

  Jim said, mockingly, “Didn’t you notice? While your boy friends were taking you for a ride, Bert and I tried to, uh, admonish them. One of them hit me a little with that shooter he had.”

  “Let me take a look at it,” she said.

  “All right, there’s a medical kit in here.” He looked at Bert apologetically. “I seem to have ripped some of those bandages off, there at the house. I’m dripping a little more ink.”

  “Need a medic?”

  “Maybe not. Let’s see.”

  On the way to the bathroom with Jill, Jim stopped at the bar long enough to pour himself some more of the ancient Scotch. Carrying his glass with him, as he followed her, he said, “This stuff almost makes the whole thing worth while, though frankly I came to this place to loaf on my veteran’s benefits and Guaranteed Annual Income, not for this sort of fun and games.”

  Kenneth Kneedler sank onto one of the living room couches and held his head in his hands.

  Bert Alshuler went over to the ornate desk and sat before the phone screen. He flicked the switch and said, “Professor Ralph Marsh. Albert Alshuler calling, I’m listed on his restricted phone.”

  Marsh’s plump face faded in. When he saw who it was, irritation was there. He snapped, “What is it now, confound it?”

  Bert said, “We’ve rescued Jill Masterson, confound it.”

  That stopped the other. Finally, he got out, “You have? How?”

  “It’s a long story and one I haven’t got time to tell right now. The thing is, the three men who were holding her were armed.”

  The professor stared at him.

  Bert said, flatly, “They’re dead. It’s undoubtedly on the data bank records in the traffic department that I drove out to that house in a rented vehicle. Here are the coordinates. The place is on the outskirts.” He stated the coordinates Kneedler had given him. “There’s something else that could be tracked down through the data banks. We had to kidnap Assistant Professor Kenneth Kneedler. He was in on it. He knew where they were. We had to track him down and that record will be somewhere too.”

  The professor was aghast.

  Bert rapped, “Can you do anything about all this?”

  “I… I’m not sure.”

  “Well, you’d better hop to it. And listen, Marsh, I want to see Katz, absolutely soonest. Understand?”

  “He’s out of town.”

  “Well, get him back into town, damn it.” He slammed off the phone.

  Bert Alshuler looked over at Kneedler who was still sitting, head in hands. Bert went over to the bar, poured a double slug in a glass and carried it to the teacher.

  “Here,” he said.

  Kneedler looked up. “I don’t drink.”

  “This comes under the head of medicine. You need it. Toss it all the way down.”

  The other obeyed and sputtered.

  Jill and Jim came back into the room, and Jim made a beeline for the bar.

  Bert growled at him, “Stay away from that liquor, you lush. We’ve got to keep our heads clear.”

  Jim ignored him, got a drink and then came over and sat on the far end of the couch Kneedler occupied. Jill took a chair and tightened her lips.

  Bert said, “Kay. Let’s start Jill, why did those men take you out of here?”

  They said they had come to warn me. To tell me a
ll about Katz and what he was up to. I wouldn’t listen and they were afraid that some of their enemies would show up. So they forced me to go along to some place where they’d have time to explain. I was stubborn.

  “Why did they shoot at Jim and me out in the hall?”

  “The others said later that the one with the gun evidently thought you were connected with Katz, and that he had just been trying to scare you off.”

  Jim chuckled sourly. “Unfortunately, we don’t scare so good.”

  “Shut up, Jim,” Bert said. “Well, what did they tell you, there at the house before Jim and I arrived?”

  “Practically nothing. I was terribly upset at seeing the shooting and all. They were letting me rest, so that I’d be settled down and could understand.”

  Bert Alshuler grimaced and turned to Kenneth Kneedler. “Kay. It’s your turn. Start at the beginning, friend. Four men are dead, and we’ve got to find some good reasons why.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Evidently, the raw spirits had done Kneedler some good. His face was defiant again. He said, “How much do you know about brain stimulation, the augmentation of concentration and the increasing of mind capacity?”

  “Precious little except personal experience the last couple of days. Start at the beginning, Kneedler,” Bert said.

  Kneedler breathed deeply. “Very well. If there is ever a beginning, possibly the beginnings were back a few decades ago when the biological explosion really started.”

  “Come again on that one,” Jim said.

  Kneedler looked over at him. “The science writer, Gordon Taylor, called it the Biological Time Bomb, and it was. A dozen breakthroughs were made over a very short period. Have you heard of Cylert, developed by the Abbott Laboratories in Chicago? No? It was the trade name of magnesium pemoline. They tested it on amnesia patients and others suffering from senility. Memory was fantastically improved. But that was just the beginning and just one line of experimentation. Another line was with THC, the laboratory equivalent of cannabis sativa.”

  “Pot,” Jim said.