Hobson remained motionless, staring out the window. After a time he nodded.
“That’s the last one. We’re all here now, all of Us. Nobody’s left in Sequoia but paranoids and non-Baldies.”
Burkhalter moved his shoulders uneasily. “Thought of an answer yet?”
“Even if I had, I couldn’t tell you, you know. The paranoids could read your mind.”
True enough. Burkhalter thought of Barbara Pell, somewhere in the village-perhaps barricaded in the power station, or at the airfield. Some confused, indefinable emotion moved within him. He caught Hobson’s bright glance.
“There aren’t any volunteers among the Baldies,” the Mute said. “You didn’t ask to be involved in this crisis. Neither did I, really. But the moment a Baldy’s born, he automatically volunteers for dangerous duty, and stands ready for instant mobilization. It just happened that the crisis occurred in Sequoia.”
“It would have happened somewhere. Sometime.” .
“Right. Being a Mute isn’t so easy, either. We’re shut out. We can never know a complete round robin. We can communicate fully only with other Mutes. We can never resign.” Not even to another Baldy could a Mute reveal the existence of the Helmet.
Burkhalter said, “Our mutation wasn’t due for another thousand years, I guess. We jumped the gun.”
“We didn’t. But we’re paying. The Eggs were the fruit of knowledge, in a way. If man hadn’t used atomic power as he did, the telepathic mutations would have had their full period of gestation. They’d never have appeared till the planet was ready for them. Not exactly ready, perhaps,” he qualified, “but we wouldn’t have had quite this mess on our hands.”
“I blame the paranoids,” Burkhalter said. “And… in a way… myself.”
“You’re not to blame.”
The Baldy grimaced. “I think I am, Hobson. Who precipitated this crisis?”
“Selfridge-” Hobson was watching.
“Barbara Pell,” Burkhalter said. “She killed Fred Selfridge. Ever since I came to Sequoia, she’s been riding me.”
“So she killed Selfridge to annoy you? That doesn’t make sense.”
“It fitted in with the general paranoid plan, I suppose. But it was what she wanted, too. She couldn’t touch me when I was consul. But where’s the consulate now?”
Hobson’s round face was very grave. A Baldy intern came in, offered sedatives and water, and the two silently swallowed the barbiturates. Hobson went to the window and watched the flaring of torches from the village. His voice was muffled.
“They’re coming up,” he said. “Listen.”
The distant shouting grew louder as they stood there in silence. Nearer and louder. Burkhalter moved forward to Hob-son’s side. The town was a flaming riot of torches now, and a river of light poured up the curved road toward the hospital.
“Can they get in?” someone asked in a hushed voice.
Heath shrugged. “Sooner or later.”
The intern said, with a touch of hysteria: “What can we doT
Hobson said, “They’re counting on the weight of numbers, of course. And they’ve got plenty of that. They aren’t armed, I suppose, except for daggers-but then they don’t need arms to do what they think they’re going to do.”
There was a dead silence in the room for a moment. Then Heath said in a thin voice, “What they think-?”
The Mute nodded toward the window. “Look.”
There was a small rush toward the glass. Peering over one another’s shoulders, the men in the room stared down the slope of the road, seeing the vanguard of the mob so near already that the separate torches were clearly distinguishable, and the foremost of the distorted, shouting faces. Ugly, blind with hatred and the intention to kill.
Hobson said in a detached voice, as if this imminent disaster were already in the past. “We’ve got the answer, you see -we know about this. But there’s another problem I can’t solve. Maybe it’s the most important one of all.” And he looked at the back of Burkhalter’s head. Burkhalter was watching the road. Now he leaned forward suddenly and said,
“Look! There in the woods-what is it? Something moving-people? Listen-what is it?”
No one paid any attention beyond the first two or three words he spoke, for all of them saw it now. It happened very swiftly. One moment the mob was pouring unchecked up the road, the next a wave of shadowy forms had moved purposefully out of the trees in compact, disciplined order. And above the hoarse shouting of the mob a cry went terribly up, a cry that chilled the blood.
It was the shrill falsetto that had once been the Rebel Yell. Two hundred years ago it echoed over the bloody battlefields of the Civil War. It moved westward with the conquered rebels and became the cowboy yell. It moved and spread with westerners after the Blowup, the tall, wild men who could not endure the regimentation of the towns. Now it was the Hedgehound yell.
From the window the hospital watchers saw it all, enacted as if on a firelit stage below them.
Out of the shadows the men in buckskin came. Firelight flashed on the long blades they carried, on the heads of the arrows they held against the bent bows. Their wild, shrill, terrible yell rose and fell, drowning out the undisciplined screams of the mob.
The buckskin ranks closed in behind the mob, around it. The townsmen began to huddle together a little, until the long loosely organized mob had become a roughly compact circle with the woodsmen surrounding them. There were cries of, “Kill ‘em! Get ‘em all!” from the townsmen, and the disorderly shouts rose raggedly through the undulations of the Hedgehound yell, but you could tell after the first two or three minutes who had the upper hand.
Not that there was no fighting. The men at the front of the mob had to do something. They did-or tried to. It was little more than a scuffle as the buckskin forms closed in.
“They’re only townsmen, you see,” Hobson said quietly, like a lecturer explaining some movie scene from old newsreel files. “Did you ever think before how completely the profession of the fighting man has died out since the Blowup? The only organized fighting men left in the world are out there, now.” He nodded toward the Hedgehound ranks, but nobody saw the motion. They were all watching with the incredulous eagerness of reprieved men as the Hedgehounds competently dealt with the mob which was so rapidly changing into a ‘disorganized rabble now as the nameless, powerful, ugly spirit that had welded it into a mob died mysteriously away among them.
All it took was superior force, superior confidence-the threat of weapons in more accustomed hands. For four generations these had been townsmen whose ancestors never knew what war meant. For four generations the Hedgehounds had lived only because they knew unremitting warfare, against the forest and mankind.
Competently they went about rounding up the mob.
“It doesn’t solve anything,” Burkhalter said at last, reluctantly, turning from the window. Then he ceased to speak, and sent his mind out in rapid thoughts so that the nontelepaths might not hear. Don’t we have to keep it all quiet? Do we still have to decide about-killing them all? We’ve saved our necks, sure-but what about the rest of the world?
Hobson smiled a grim, thin smile that looked odd on his plump face. He spoke aloud, to everyone in the room.
“Get ready,” he said. “We’re leaving the hospital. All of us. The non-Baldy staff, too.”
Heath, sweating and haggard, caught his breath. “Wait a minute. I know you’re the boss, but-I’m not leaving my patients!”
“We’re taking them, too,” Hobson said. Confidence was in his voice, but not in his eyes. He was looking at Burkhalter. The last and most difficult problem was still to be met
The Cody’s thought touched Hobson’s mind. All ready.
You’ve got enough Hedgehounds?
Four tribes. They were all near the Fraser Run. The new consulate set-up had drawn ‘em from the north. Curiosity.
Report to group.
Scattered across the continent, Mutes listened. We’ve cleaned out S
equoia. No deaths. A good many got pretty well beaten up, but they can all travel. (A thought of wry amusement.) Your townspeople ain’t fighters.
Ready for the march?
Ready. They’re all rounded up, men, women and children, in the north valley. Umpire Vine’s in charge of that sector.
Start the march. About the paranoids, any trouble there?
No trouble. They haven’t figured it all out yet. They’re still in the town, sitting tight. We’ve got to move fast, though. If they try to get out of Sequoia, my men will kill. There was a brief pause. Then-The march has started.
Good. Use the blindfolds when necessary.
There are no stars underground, the Cody’s thought said grimly.
No non-Baldy must die. Remember, this is a point of honor. Our solution may not be the best one, but—
None will die.
We’re evacuating the hospital. Is Mattoon ready?
Ready. Evacuate.
Burkhalter rubbed a welt on his jaw. “What happened?” he asked thickly, staring around in the rustling darkness of the pines.
A shadow moved among the trees. “Getting the patients ready for transportation-remember? You were slugged. That violent case-“
“I remember.” Burkhalter felt sheepish. “I should have watched his mind closer. I couldn’t. He wasn’t thinking-” He shivered slightly. Then he sat up. “Where are we?”
“Quite a few miles north of Sequoia.”
“My head feels funny.” Burkhalter rearranged his wig. He rose, steadying himself against a tree, and blinked vaguely. After a moment he had reoriented. This must be Mount Nich-ols, the high peak that rose tall among the mountains guarding Sequoia. Very far away, beyond intervening lower summits, he could see a distant glow of light that was the village.
But beneath him, three hundred feet down, a procession moved through a defile in the mountain wall. They emerged into the moonlight and went swiftly on and were lost hi shadow.
There were stretcher-bearers, and motionless, prone figures being carried along; there were men who walked arm in arm; there were tall men in buckskin shirts and fur caps, bows slung across their shoulders, and they were helping, too. The silent procession moved on into the wilderness.
“The Sequoia Baldies,” Hobson said. “And the non-Baldy staff-and the patients. We couldn’t leave them.”
“But-“
“It was the only possible answer for us, Burkhalter. Listen. For twenty years we’ve been preparing-not for this, but for the pogrom. Up in the woods, in a place only Mutes know about, there’s a series of interlocking caves. It’s a city now. A city without population. The Cody’s-there are four of them, really-have been using it as a laboratory and a hideout. There’s material there for hydroponics, artificial sunlight, everything a culture needs. The caves aren’t big enough to shelter all the Baldies, but they’ll hold Sequoia’s population.”
Burkhalter stared. “The non-Baldies?”
“Yes. They’ll be segregated, for a while, till they can face truth. They’ll be prisoners; we can’t get around that fact. It was a choice between killing them and holding them incommunicado. In the caves, they’ll adapt. Sequoia was a tight, independent community. Family units won’t be broken up. The same social pattern can be followed. Only-it’ll be underground, in an artificial culture,”
“Can’t the paranoids find them?”
“There are no stars underground. The paranoids may read the minds of the Sequoians, but you can’t locate a mind by telepathic triangulation. Only Mutes know the location of the caves, and no paranoid can read a Mute’s thoughts. They’re on their way now to join us-enough Mutes to take the Sequoians on the last lap. Not even the Hedgehounds will know where they’re going.”
“Then the secret will be safe among telepaths-except for the Hedgehounds. What if they talk?”
“They won’t. Lots of reasons. For one, they have no communication to speak of with the outside world. For another, they’re under an autocracy, really. The Codys know how to enforce their rules. Also, have you thought how the towns would react if they knew Hedgehounds had cleaned out a whole village? To save their own skins the Hedgehounds will keep their mouths shut. Oh, it may leak out. With so many individuals involved you never can be absolutely sure. But I think for an extemporaneous plan, it’ll work out well enough.” Hobson paused and his mind brushed with the keenness of a quick glance against Burkhalter’s mind. “What’s the matter, Burk? Still worried about something?”
“The people, I suppose,” Burkhalter admitted. “The humans. It doesn’t seem exactly fair, you know. I’d hate to be cut off forever from all contact from the rest of the world. They-“
Hobson thought an explosive epithet. It was much more violent thought than voiced. He said, “Fair! Of course it isn’t fair! You saw that mob coming up the road, Burk-did they have fairness in mind then? If anyone ever deserved punishment that mob does!” His voice grew milder. “One thing we tend to lose sight of, you see. We grow up with the idea of indulgence toward humans pounded into us to such an extent we almost forget they’re responsible people, after all. A pogrom is the most indefensible concerted action a group can be guilty of. It’s always an attack by a large majority on a defenseless minority. These people would have killed us all without a qualm, if they could. They’re lucky we aren’t as vicious as they were. They deserve a lot worse than they’re getting, if you ask me. We didn’t ask to be put in a spot like this. There’s unfairness involved all around, but I think this solution is the best possible under the circumstances.
They watched the procession below moving through the moonlight. Presently Hobson went on. “Another angle turned up after we put this thing in motion, too. A mighty good one. By sheer accident we’re going to have a wonderful laboratory experiment going on in human relations. It won’t be a deadend community in the caves. Eventually, we think the Baldies and the non-Baldies will intermarry there. The hospital staff are potential good-will ambassadors. It’ll take careful handling, but I think with our facilities for mind reading and the propaganda we can put out adjusted by the readings, things will work out. It may be the basis for the ultimate solution of the whole Baldy-human problem.
“You see, this will be a microcosm of what the whole world ought to be-would have been if the Blowup hadn’t brought us telepaths into being ahead of our normal mutation time. It will be a community of humans dominated by telepaths, controlled by them benevolently. We’ll learn how to regulate relations with humans, and there’ll be no danger while we learn. It’ll be trial and error without punishment for error. A little hard on the humans, perhaps, but no harder than it’s been for generations on the Baldy minority all over the world. We might even hope that in a few years’ time the experiment may go well enough that even if the news leaked out, the community members would elect to stay put. Well, we’ll have to wait and see. It can’t be solved any better way that we know of. There is no solution, except adjustment between the races. If every Baldy on earth committed voluntary suicide, there’d still be Baldies born. You can’t stop it. The Blowup’s responsible for that, not us. We … wait a minute.”
Hobson turned his head sharply, and in the rustling night silences of the forest, broken only by the subdued noises of the proposition far below, they listened for a sound not meant for ears.
Burkhalter heard nothing, but in a moment Hobson nodded.
“The town’s about to go,” he said.
Burkhalter frowned. “There’s another loose end, isn’t there? What if they blame Pinewood for dusting Sequoia off?”
“There won’t be any proof either way. We’ve about decided to spread rumors indicating two or three other towns along with Pinewood, enough to confuse the issue. Maybe we’ll say the explosion might have come from an accident in the Egg dump. That’s happened, you know. Pinewood and the rest will just have to get along under a slight cloud for awhile. They’ll have an eye kept on them, and if ,-they should show any more signs of aggression… but of course,
nothing will happen. I think … look, Burkhalter! There she goes!”
Far away below them the glow that was Sequoia lay like a lake of light in the mountains’ cup. As they watched, it changed. A nova flamed in incandescent splendor, whitening the men’s faces and showing the pines in starkly black silhouette.
For an instant the soundless ether was full of a stunning, mindless cry that rocked the brain of every telepath within its range. Then there was that terrible void, that blankness of cessation into which no Baldy cares to look. This time it was a mighty vortex, for a great many telepathic minds perished together in that nova. It was a vortex that made the mind reel perilously near its great, sucking brink. Paranoid they may have been, but they were telepathic too, and their going shook every brain that could perceive the passing.
In Burkhalter’s mind a reeling blindness struck. He thought, Barbara, Barbara….
It was an utterly unguarded cry. He made no effort to hush it from Hobson’s perception.
Hobson said, as if he had not heard, “That’s the finish. Two mutes in copters dropped the eggs. They’re watching now. No survivors. Burkhalter-“
He waited. Slowly Burkhalter pulled himself out of that blind abyss into which the beautiful, terrible, deadly image of Barbara Pell whirled away toward oblivion. Slowly he brought the world back into focus around him. “Yes?”
“Look. The last of the Sequoians are going by. You and I aren’t needed here any more, Burk.”
There was significance in that statement. Burkhalter shook himself mentally and said with painful bewilderment, “I don’t … quite get it. Why did you bring me up here? Am I-” He hesitated. “I’m not going with the others?”
“You can’t go with them,” the Mute said quietly. There was a brief silence; a cool wind whispered through the pine needles. The pungent fragrance and freshness of the night washed around the two telepaths. “Think, Burkhalter,” Hob-son said, “Think.”
Mutant (SF Anthology) Page 17
