Mutant (SF Anthology)

by Henry Kuttner

  Where is he?

  The answer came swiftly. Can’t locate him. Near you, though—

  Someone-a woman, the overtones of her thought showed -sent a message tinged with emotional confusion, almost hysterical. One of the patients from the hospital—

  Instantly the thoughts of the others closed reassuringly around her, warm with friendliness and comfort. Even Burkhalter took time to send a clear thought of unity. He recognized among the others the cool, competent personality of Duke Heath, the Baldy priest-medic, with its subtle psychological shadings that only another telepath could sense.

  It’s Self ridge, Heath told the woman, while the other Baldies listened. He’s just drunk. I think I’m nearest, Burkhalter. I’m coming.

  A helicopter curved overhead, its freight-gliders swinging behind it, stabilized by their gyroscopes. It swept over the western ridge and was gone toward the Pacific. As its humming died, Burkhalter could hear the muffled roar of the cataract up the valley. He was vividly conscious of the waterfall’s feathery whiteness plunging down the cliff, of the slopes of pine and fir and redwood around Sequoia, of the distant noise of the cellulose mills. He focused on these clean, familiar things to shut out the sickly foulness that blew from Selfridge’s mind to his own. Sensibility and sensitivity had gone hand in hand with the Baldies, and Burkhalter had wondered more than once how Duke Heath managed to maintain his balance in view of the man’s work among the psychiatric patients at the hospital. The race of Baldies had come too soon; they were not aggressive; but race-survival depended on competition.

  He’s in the tavern, a woman’s thought said. Burkhalter automatically jerked away from the message; he knew the mind from which it came. Logic told him instantly that the source didn’t matterin this instance. Barbara Pell was a paranoid; therefore an enemy. But both paranoids and Baldies were desperately anxious to avoid any open break. Though their ultimate goals lay worlds apart, yet their paths sometimes paralleled.

  But already it was too late. Fred Selfridge came out of the tavern, blinked against the sunlight, and saw Burkhalter. The trader’s thin, hollow-cheeked face twisted into a sour grin. The blurred malignance of his thought drove before him as he walked toward Burkhalter, and one hand kept making little darts toward the misericordia swung at his belt. He stopped before Burkhalter, blocking the Baldy’s progress. His grin broadened.

  Burkhalter had paused. A dry panic tightened his throat. He was afraid, not for himself, but for his race, and every Baldy in Sequoia knew that-and watched. He said “Morning, Fred.”

  Selfridge hadn’t shaved that morning. Now he rubbed his stubbled chin and let his eyelids droop. “Mr. Burkhalter,” he said. “Consul Burkhalter. Good thing you remembered to wear a cap this morning. Skinheads catch cold pretty easy.” Play for time, Duke Heath ordered. I’m coming. I’ll fix it. “I didn’t pull any wires to get this job, Fred,” Burkhalter said. “The Towns made me consul. Why blame me for it?” “You pulled wires, all right,” Selfridge said. “I know graft when I see it. You were a schoolteacher from Modoc or some hick town. What the devil do you know about Hedgehounds?”

  “Not as much as you do,” Burkhalter admitted. “You’ve had the experience.”

  “Sure. Sure I have. So they take a half-baked teacher and make him consul to the Hedgehounds. A greenhorn who doesn’t even know those bichos have got cannibal tribes. I traded with the woodsmen for thirty years, and I know how to handle ‘em. Are you going to read ‘em pretty little stories out of books?”

  “I’ll do what I’m told. I’m not the boss.”

  “No. But maybe your friends are. Connections! If I’d had the same connections you’ve got, I’d be sitting on my tail like you, pulling in credits for the same work. Only I’d do that work better-a lot better.”

  “I’m not interfering with your business,” Burkhalter said. “You’re still trading, aren’t you? I’m minding my own affairs.”

  “Are you? How do I know what you tell the Hedgehounds?’

  “My records are open to anybody.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure. My job’s just to promote peaceful relations with the Hedgehounds. Not to do any trading, except what they want-and then I refer ‘em to you.”

  “It sounds fine,” Selfridge said. “Except for one thing. You can read my mind and tell the Hedgehounds all about my private business.”

  Burkhalter’s guard slipped; he couldn’t have helped it. He had stood the man’s mental nearness as long as he could, though it was like breathing foul air. “Afraid of that?” he asked, and regretted the words instantly. The voices in his mind cried: Careful!

  Selfridge flushed. “So you do it after all, eh? All that fine talk about you skinheads respecting people’s privacy-sure! No wonder you got the consulate! Reading minds-“

  “Hold on,” Burkhalter said. “I’ve never read a non-Baldy’s mind in my life. That’s the truth.”

  “Is it?” the trader sneered. “How the devil do I know if you’re lying? But you can look inside my head and see if I’m telling the truth. What you Baldies need is to be taught your place, and for two coins I’d-“

  Burkhalter’s mouth felt stiff. “I don’t duel,” he said, with an effort. “I won’t duel.”

  “Yellow,” Selfridge said, and waited, his hand hovering over the misericordia’s hilt.

  And there was the usual quandary. No telepath could

  possibly lose a duel with a non-Baldy, unless he wanted to commit suicide. But he dared not win, either. The Baldies baked their own humble pie; a minority that lives on sufferance must not reveal its superiority, or it won’t survive. One such incident might have breached the dyke the telepaths had painfully erected against the rising tide of intolerance.

  For the dyke was too long. It embraced all of mankind. And it was impossible to watch every inch of that incredible levee of custom, orientation and propaganda, though the basic tenets were instilled in each Baldy from infancy. Some day the dyke would collapse, but each hour of postponement meant the gathering of a little more strength-Duke Heath’s voice said, “A guy like you, Selfridge, would be better off dead.”

  Sudden shock touched Burkhalter. He shifted his gaze to the priest-medic, remembering the subtle tension he had recently sensed under Heath’s deep calm, and wondering if this was the blowoff. Then he caught the thought in Heath’s mind and relaxed, though warily.

  Beside the Baldy was Ralph Selfridge, a smaller, slighter edition of Fred. He was smiling rather sheepishly.

  Fred Selfridge showed his teeth. “Listen, Heath,” he snapped. “Don’t try to stand on your position. You haven’t got one. You’re a surrogate. No skinhead can be a real priest or a medic.”

  “Sure they can,” Heath said. “But they don’t.” His round, youthful face twisted into a scowl. “Listen to me-“

  “I’m not listening to-“

  “Shut up!”

  Selfridge gasped in surprise. He was caught flat-footed, undecided whether to use his misericordia or his fists, and while he hesitated, Heath went on angrily.

  “I said you’d be better off dead and I meant it! This kid brother of yours thinks you’re such a hotshot he imitates everything you do. Now look at him! If the epidemic hits Sequoia, he won’t have enough resistance to work up antibodies, and the young idiot won’t let me give him preventive shots. I suppose he thinks he can live on whiskey like you!”

  Fred Selfridge frowned at Heath, stared at his younger brother, and looked back at the priest-medic. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

  “Leave Ralph alone. He’s all right.”

  “Well, start saving for his funeral expenses,” Heath said callously. “As a surrogate medic, I'll make a prognosis right now-rigor mortis?’

  Selfridge licked his lips. “Wait a minute. The kid isn’t sick, is he?”

  “There’s an epidemic down toward Columbia Crossing,” Heath said. “One of the new virus mutations. If it hits us here, there’ll be trouble. It’s a bit like tetanus, but averti
n’s no good. Once the nerve centers are hit, nothing can be done. Preventive shots will help a lot, especially when a man’s got the susceptible blood-type-as Ralph has.”

  Burkhalter caught a command from Heath’s mind.

  “You could use some shots yourself, Fred,” the priest-medic went on. “Still, your blood type is B, isn’t it? And you’re tough enough to throw off an infection. This virus is something new, a mutation of the old flu bug-“

  He went on. Across the street someone called Burkhalter’s name and the consul slipped away, unnoticed except for a parting glare from Selfridge.

  A slim, red-haired girl was waiting under a tree at the corner. Burkhalter grimaced inwardly as he saw he could not avoid her. He was never quite able to control the turmoil of feeling which the very sight or thought of Barbara Pell stirred up within him. He met her bright narrow eyes, full of pinpoints of light. He saw her round slimness that looked so soft and would, he thought, be as hard to the touch as her mind was hard to the thought’s touch. Her bright red wig, almost too luxuriant, spilled heavy curls down about the square, alert face to move like red Medusa-locks upon her shoulders when she turned her head. Curiously, she had a redhead’s typical face, bigh-cheekboned, dangerously alive. There is a quality of the red-haired that goes deeper than the hair, for Barbara Pell had, of course, been born as hairless as any Baldy.

  “You’re a fool,” she said softly as he came up beside her. “Why don’t you get rid of Selfridge?”

  Burkhalter shook his head. “No. And don’t you try anything.”

  “I tipped you off that he was in the tavern. And I got here before anybody else, except Heath. If we could work together-“

  “We can’t.”

  “Dozens of times we’ve saved you traitors,” the woman said bitterly. “Will you wait until the humans stamp out your lives-“

  Burkhalter walked past her and turned toward the pathway that climbed the steep ascent leading out of Sequoia. He was vividly aware of Barbara Pell looking after him. He could see her as clearly as if he had eyes in the back of his head, her bright, dangerous face, her beautiful body, her bright, beautiful, insane thoughts-For behind all their hatefulness, the paranoids’ vision was as beautiful and tempting as the beauty of Barbara Pell. Perilously tempting. A free world, where Baldies could walk and live and think in safety, no longer bending the scope of their minds into artificial, cramping limits as once men bent their backs in subservience to their masters. A bent back is a humiliating thing, but even a serf’s mind is free to range. To cramp the mind is to cramp the soul, and no kumiliation could surpass the humiliation of that.

  But there was no such world as the paranoids dreamed of. The price would be too high. What shall it profit a man, thought Burkhalter wryly, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? The words might first have been spoken in this connection and no other, so perfectly did they apply to it. The price must be murder, and whoever paid that price would automatically sully the world he bought with it until, if he were a normal creature, he could never enjoy what he had paid so high to earn. Burkhalter called up a bit of verse into his mind and savored again the bitter melancholy of the poet who wrote it, perhaps more completely than the poet himself ever dreamed.

  I see the country, far away,

  Where I shall never stand. The heart goes where no footstep may,

  Into the promised land.

  Barbara Pell’s mind shot after him an angry, evil shaft of scorn and hatred. “You’re a fool, you’re all fools, y”fu don’t deserve telepathy if you degrade it. If you’d only join us in-” The thought ceased to be articulate and ran suddenly, gloatingly red with spilled blood, reeking saltily of it, as if her whole mind bathed deliciously in the blood of all humans.

  Burkhalter jerked his thoughts away from contact with hers, sickened. It isn’t the end of free living they want any more, he told himself in sudden realization-it’s the means

  they’re lusting after now. They’ve lost sight of a free world. All they want is killing.

  “Fool, fool, fool!” Barbara Pell’s thoughts screamed after him. “Wait and see! Wait until-one times two is two, two times two is four, three times two-“

  Burkhalter thought grimly, “They’re up to something,” and sent his mind probing gingerly past the sudden artificial barrier with which she had sought to blank out a thought even she realized was indiscreet. She fought the probing viciously. He sensed only vague, bloody visions stirring behind the barrier. Then she laughed without a sound and hurled a clear, terrible, paranoid thought at him, a picture of sickening clarity that all but splashed in his face with its overrunning redness.

  He drew his mind back with swiftness that was pure reflex. As safe to touch fire as thoughts like hers. It was one way any paranoid could shut out the inquisitive thoughts of a non-paranoid when need arose. And of course, normally no Baldy would dream of probing uninvited into another mind. Burkhalter shuddered.

  They were up to something, certainly. He must pass the episode on to those whose business it was to know about the paranoids. Barbara Pell’s mind was not, in any case, likely to yield much information on secret plans. She was an executioner, not a planner. He withdrew his thoughts from her, fastidiously, shaking off the contamination as a cat shakes water from its feet.

  He climbed the steep slope that led out of Sequoia to Ms home, deliberately shutting his mind from all things behind him. Fifteen minutes’ walk brought him to the rustic log-and-plastic house built near the shadow of the West Canadian Forest. This was his consulate, and only the cabin of the Selfridge brothers lay farther out in the wilderness that stretched north to the Beaufort Sea that mingles with the Arctic Ocean.

  By his desk a glowing red light indicated a message in the terminal of the penumatic that stretched for six miles into the forest. He read it carefully. A delegation of Hedgehounds would arrive soon, representatives from three tribal groups. Well-He checked supplies, televised the general store, and sat down behind his desk to wait. Heath would be along soon. Meanwhile he closed his eyes and concentrated on the fresh smell of pine that blew through the open windows. But the fresh, clean scent was sullied by vagrant thought currents that tainted the air. Burkhalter shivered.

  II

  Sequoia lay near the border of old Canada, now an immense wilderness that the forest had largely reclaimed. Cellulose byproducts were its industry, and there was an immense psychiatric hospital, which accounted for the high percentage of Baldies in the village. Otherwise Sequoia was distinguished from the hundreds of thousands of other towns that dotted America by the recent establishment of a diplomatic station there, the consulate that would be a means of official contact with the wandering tribes that retreated into the forests as civilization encroached. It was a valley town, bordered by steep slopes, with their enormous conifers and the white-water cataracts racing down from snowy summits. Not far westward, beyond the Strait of Georgia and Vancouver Island, lay the Pacific. But there were few highways; transport was aerial. And communication was chiefly by teleradio.

  Four hundred people, more or less, lived in Sequoia, a tight little semi-independent settlement, bartering its specialized products for shrimps and pompano from Lafitte; books from Modoc; beryllium-steel daggers and motor-plows from American Gun; clothing from Dempsey and Gee Eye. The Boston textile mills were gone with Boston; that smoking, gray desolation had not changed since the year of the Blowup. But there was still plenty of room in America, no matter how much the population might increase; war had thinned the population. And as technology advanced so did improvements in reclamation of arid and unfertile land, and the hardier strains of the kudzu plant had already opened vast new tracts for farming. But agriculture was not the only industry. The towns specialized, never expanding into cities, but sending out spores that would grow into new villages-or, rather, reaching out like raspberry canes, to take root whenever they touched earth.

  Burkhalter was deliberately not thinking of the red-haired woman when Duke Heath came
in. The priest-medic caught the strained, negative mental picture, and nodded.

  “Barbara Pell,” he said. “I saw her.” Both men blurred the surface of their minds. That couldn’t mask their thoughts, but if any other brain began probing, there would be an instant’s warning, during which they could take precautions. Necessarily, however, the conversation stayed oral rather than telepathic.

  “They can smell trouble coming,” Burkhalter said. They’ve been infiltrating Sequoia lately, haven’t they?”

  “Yes. The minute you copped this consulate, they started to come in.” Heath nibbled his knuckles. “In forty years the paranoids have built up quite an organization.”

  “Sixty years,” Burkhalter said. “My grandfather saw it coming back in ‘82. There was a paranoid in Modoc-a lone wolf at the time, but it was one of the first symptoms. And since then-“

  “Well, they’ve grown qualitatively, not quantitatively. There are more true Baldies now than paranoids. Psychologically they’re handicapped. They hate to intermarry with non-Baldies. Whereas we do, and the dominant strain goes on-spreads out.”

  “For a while,” Burkhalter said.

  Heath frowned. “There’s no epidemic at Columbia Crossing. I had to get Selfridge off your neck somehow, and he’s got a strongly paternal instinct toward his brother. That did it-but not permanently. With that so-and-so, the part equals the whole. You got the consulate; he had a nice little racket gypping the Hedgehounds; he hates you-so he jumps on your most vulnerable point. Also, he rationalizes. He tells himself that if you didn’t have the unfair advantage of being a Baldy, you’d never have landed the consulate.”

  “It was unfair.”

  “We had to do it,” Heath said.J’Non-Baldies mustn’t find out what we’re building up among the Hedgehounds. Some day the woods folk may be our only safety. If a non-Baldy had got the consulate-“