Baldy

by Henry Kuttner

  No, there was nothing he could say.

  She drew a wet hand across her face, pushing back her hair, looking up at him blurrily, and then came on uncertain, shoeless feet across the kitchen to lay her cheek on his shoulder and push her arms under his, around his chest.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm crazy. It's hard for you too, Jeff."

  "Yes."

  "We'll send the baby away next week," she promised. "Then I'll be sane again. I-I hate whiskey. It's just that--"

  "I know." He smoothed the hair away from her wet face, tried to find words for the complex waves of love, pity, remorse, terror and pain which filled his mind constantly as long as he was with his wife, or thinking of her. It is curious that telepaths are often almost inarticulate when it is necessary to communicate nuances of feeling in words. They never need to use words, among their own kind.

  "Be patient with me, Lucy," he said finally. "There's trouble coming. There isn't much time, and I may fail. I-I'll come home as quickly as I can."

  "I know you will, dear. I wish I could do-anything."

  He held her.

  "I'll bring you something you'll like," he said. "A surprise. I don't know what yet, but something nice. And Lucy, after --next week--if you mean it, we'll move if you want. Find a new apartment over in Cave Seven. You can order new furniture, and we'll--" He scarcely knew what he was saying. Illusion and reality were too confused.

  "We'll think of something, dear," she said. "It's all right."

  "I'll go, then," he said.

  She nodded. "I'll miss you. Hurry back."

  Cody shut the grille of the lift behind him and leaned his head against the steel wall, slumping wearily as he shaped in his mind the code-signal to activate the mechanisms. A preoccupied mind somewhere responded with another segment of the cipher, and a third (someone going by rapidly, late to dinner) tossed in the necessary remaining symbols. Three mental images had to be projected simultaneously to operate the lift. It was a precaution. Escape exits could be operated by telepaths only.

  He pushed a slanting door open into a welter of dripping leaves and the sharp, sweet odor of wet pine and rain. A startled rabbit exploded out of the underbrush. Cody shut the camouflaged portal and looked up, squinting against the rain that drove in his face. From somewhere above a voiceless greeting came, a motor hummed and a dark coil rolled smoothly down out of the grayness. Cody set his foot in the stirrup and felt the soft instant upward lift of the basket seat snatching him aloft as he sank into it. The hovering copter received him through a single gaping jaw.

  Arn Friedmann did not glance back from the controls. He did not need to. Short, squat, gravely expressionless in face and in manner, he leaned his dark-capped head forward to peer through the rain, his mind detaching enough of itself from attention to the business at hand to send a wordless greeting.

  For a moment Cody only leaned back and let the cool, untroubled silence of the open sky wash his mind clean. It was like allowing long-taut muscles to relax at last. The cavern was so filled with closed-down resentments, guilts and fears and tensions that after a while even the air became hard to breathe, for a telepath.

  Friedmann had something urgent he wanted to convey. Cody felt the touch of it on the outer edges of his awareness, waiting, letting the newcomer breathe clean air a while. Friedmann's mind hovered as the copter had hovered, patient, abiding the signal.

  Under them the pine woods swept backward, tossing, rain-blurred. Water ran down the panes. The motor hummed pleasantly in the coolness. Lucy. Five years now without sight of rain or trees or sky. A lifetime ahead of her without them, or else a quick death, or--the Inductor.

  "We've got to have more time," Friedmann's thought came. "If a pogrom starts now, it'll spread. I think the paranoids are counting on that. They've been filtering into the key towns-the places where riots would be apt to start. Like American Gun. Jasper Home's there."

  "Since when?" Cody asked.

  "Three weeks or so. And he's been working hard. You know how the paranoids do it. Read a mind and drop a loaded word at the right time, to keep the tension building. Probably Home could start a riot in American Gun any time he liked, by now."

  "Not if he'd dead," Cody's thought said, with grim anticipation. He leaned back, watching the mists scud past, thinking of American Gun. It was a gambling town. That was the specialty, anyway, although there was a famous research laboratory in the town, and a master artisan in plastics lived there. But basically men came to American Gun to gamble.

  That's what I'll be doing, Cody thought. He watched sunlight dry the rain-drops on the window beside him.

  Friedmann left Cody at the outskirts of American Gun and sent the copter hurrying east. He had an errand of his own in the town of Bleeding Kansas, five hundred miles away. Cody watched the copter lift in a perfectly empty blue sky.

  American Gun lay in a great flat half-saucer rimmed by rising hills and cut across and bounded by a broad, slow river. There were a number of distant toothpick figures on the beach, and a variety of boats on the river, transparent plastic canoes and skiffs glinting in the sun. Dark dots against the placid green indicated swimmers. But the wind blowing up from the river was hot.

  Cody stood on the lower foothills, looking down over American Gun. A certain calm relaxed him, now that he was moving directly toward a clearly-seen goal. There were in the town perhaps a hundred buildings, few of them large, and none close to the others. Trees flourished, or would have if their leaves had not drooped limply-all but the ones near the river bank. Only children were moving fast. Under a live-oak Cody could see a little party around a spread white rectangle, having a picnic. Against the white cloth he could see the green and red of watermelon.

  A small white dog trotted slowly past him, its tongue lolling. It gave him a bored but wary glance. In its mind was a dim image of a frightful, slavering beast somewhat larger than a tiger. With some difficulty Cody identified the Terror as a dachshund whom the small white dog feared.

  Somewhat diverted, Cody began to descend the slope toward American Gun. He didn't hurry. The moist, warm air was pleasant against his skin. Unthinking, receptive, for the moment, he let the cross-currents of thought sweep like the sound of a sea through him, while he moved on in half-hypnotic rhythm, focusing on a long Byzantine-style building ahead, and watching it grow larger, step by step.

  ... There was room enough on earth. And surely there were enemies enough besides other men. Man had been fighting a war ever since he stood upright, and there had never been any armistice declared against the oldest enemy of all, the enemy that burned in the hot blue sky, that hid, rod-shaped, toxic and invisible, in the soil, that ebbed now in the river but could rise and flood, the enemy that went on unknowing and unheeding man, whose ancient power always pounded at the dyke man's intelligence had built.

  Enemy and friend at once-this gift of the gods. Without it, without the physical and chemical forces which had built this air, this water, this shallow valley of fertile loam, there would have been no life at all. A fairy gift--this planet. Guard it, keep it, watch it--learn to predict and control it--and it will serve you. Forget it while you fight among yourselves, and the burning sun, the flooding waters, the deadly cold, and the fecund micro-organisms will work as they have always worked, in their old pattern, and in that pattern there is no planned place for man. How like a god!

  By now Cody was at the little park before the long Byzantine building. Trees were wilting above the brownish lawns. A shallow rectangular pool held goldfish, who gulped hopefully as they swam to the surface and flipped down again. The little minds of the fish lay open to Cody, minds thoughtless as so many bright, tiny, steady flames on little birthday candles, as he walked past the pool.

  He did not enter the Byzantine building. He had not intended to, physically. Instead, he turned toward one of the shoulder-high pedestals set in irregular rows along the front of the building and stopped before one that was not in use. A few men and women had their heads bowe
d over the pedestals, peering into eyepieces. Not many. It was too hot, even here in the shade.

  Cody bent over the eyepiece of his pedestal, found a coin in his pocket, and pushed it into the slot. The blackness at which he stared turned into a pattern of bright letters: Radio-cobalt. Then a series of number-ranges appeared, one by one. At random Cody pushed the button that indicated

  his choice. That started the mechanism. He found himself looking into a magnified Wilson cloud-chamber, streaked with flashing trails of sub-atomic activity. Just above the image a counter ticked off the number of electronic collisions. If his guess had been accurate enough, he might win the jackpot, and prove—

  Nothing. Nothing at all. But as Cody's mind began to range, he felt the eager, troubled anticipation hi the minds around him, and realized that to win, for most of these others, would prove a great deal.

  For, basically, those minds held no confidence at all. Over all of them lay the heavy threat that had shadowed the world since the Blowup and put an irresistible weapon in every hand, a cache of Eggs in every town. Instead of national walls, there was now a wall around each town-and around each individual. Survival still depended on luck-blind chance.

  And so the gambling towns, like American Gun, flourished. Here, at the casinos, at the slot-machine, at roulette and craps and chuck-a-luck and faro, men could prove that the blind goddess favored them, and that they were still safe. The social uncertainty was shifted to the mechanical uncertainty of the fall of dice or the spin of a wheel, and personal responsibility was shifted to the hands of the lady the Greeks called Tuche and the Romans, Fortuna.

  Cody felt people moving past him, in and out of the casino. To his sensitive mind the hot air seemed to spark. Perhaps that was because of the steadily mounting tension spreading from no source a human could identify and which no human could ignore. But Cody knew the source. Jasper Home had not been in American Gun for weeks without a purpose.

  Here, if anywhere, the pogrom could be started.

  And here, in American Gun, was the force which had driven Cody helplessly into his dilemma, relentlessly forcing him toward the choice that no man could contemplate for too long without seeking some easier answer. Here was the pressure which had forced his hand to the knife, and the knife to his neck. And here, too, was the man who was responsible.

  Jasper Home, Cody thought as the flashing streaks of the cloud-chamber burned before his eyes. His mind polarized toward that goal with a deadly intentness. Allenby, back in the Caves, had been right. To kill Home, not himself, was the real goal for Cody-because that would risk merely his own life; it would not mean betrayal of his own people by dropping the responsibility he carried for all of them. The paranoids had been the enemy, from the very beginning. Always they had worked to destroy the acceptance of the Baldies by the rest of mankind. They were the ones who had caused the destruction of Sequoia, and the need to keep humans captives in the Caves. Had that not happened, he would probably have never met Lucy, and she would be happier now, and so would he. Now, no matter how hard both of them might try, there could never be any real answer for them, or for their child. There was no way out. No matter what happened, there were wounds that could never heal.

  The earth itself was both enemy and friend. But the paranoids were all enemy, and of them all, Jasper Home was somewhere here in American Gun, within Jeff Cody's reach -a man to be killed, if for no other reason, than because he and his kindred paranoids had made the Baldies killers.

  The glittering streaks of light in the cloud-chamber died. The viewer went dark. Cody had won nothing. He slipped another coin into the slot and again watched the electronic bombardment, while his mind ranged and closed in toward his quarry.

  Within the Byzantine building a flurry of thoughts whirled like the roulette wheels. This was a gossip center for American Gun. Here, now and then, he caught images which he identified with Home. Gradually he tested these thoughts, like directional antenna, until a picture of Home's habits began to clarify. But other things clarified as well-the mounting pressure of events in the town which no nontelepath connected with the paranoid's presence. ,

  No one in American Gun had shaved for twenty-four hours. Oh, some had-but not many. The Baldies had no need to shave, and, of course, there were humans courageous enough to risk suspicion. In the nearby research laboratories the no-shaving movement had not taken hold. And there were others, but not many, and those with smooth chins often moved in a circle of suspicious glances and left trails of hostile murmurings behind them.

  So it might be doubly difficult to kill Home. Violence could be the move that touched off the pogrom-exactly what Cody had hoped to avoid by eliminating the paranoid. That meant Home would have to be killed privately, above all, away from any potential mob leaders who might trigger a riot. (There were such men in American Gun; Home had found them already. They would be the ones to lead the mob when the time came.)

  -he's at the Last Chance.

  Cody lifted his head, dazzled for an instant by the deep blue shadow and the white sunlight. His mind mapped a picture of American Gun from the data he had already gathered. The Last Chance would be at the north end of town, near the research laboratories. Home might or might not still be there, but it would be easy to pick up his trail.

  Cody skirted the goldfish-pool, past the tiny flickering flames of the small, drifting minds, and took a path leading northward through the town. His thoughts continued to range. Several times he caught the thoughts of other Baldies. Through them he could have located Home instantly and accurately, but they did not wear the Mute helmets, and the minds could have been read in turn by the paranoid. And Home must not be forewarned. Cody reached up to touch the fine-spun skein of filaments hidden beneath his wig. As long as he wore the Mute helmet, Home could not read his mind.

  The crowds began to thicken. Rumors went softly flickering past like heat lightning in the sweltering air, gathering corroborative detail as they went. Someone (Cody's mind heard the whisper) had broken the bank at the Gold Horseshoe last night, walked out with two heavy sacks of credits, and carelessly let his wig blow off in the doorway, revealing a hairless head. Yes, the Baldies were casting off the mask now and grabbing up credits in every way they could, preparing for the zero hour when they would take over the nation. ...

  Cody walked a little faster. Stray thoughts from the Baldies in American Gun whispered to him. Things are getting out of hand, the word went silently through the air from mind to mind, from anxious group to group, from Baldies going stoically about their business among the humans and showing impassive faces as their minds touched and clung together on the verge of panic. Today mothers had kept their children home, and the family copters were fueled and ready.

  Above the crowd, Cody saw the flashing sign of the Last Chance ahead. He moved on, his mind searching for the presence of Home. And in spite of the noiseless tensions straining and wrenching through the hot air, he realized that he felt curiously happy. Everything seemed very easy and simple now, for the first time in many months. Kill Home. That was all; that was enough. Kill Horne, his mind said, without any of the doubts and unsureness of the last months and years.

  He paused outside the old-fashioned photo-electric doors of the Last Chance, searching for his enemy. The rumors blew past him, fresh as if no voice had ever whispered them before. The whispers spoke of the string of freight-copters grounded with a fuel-leak at the edge of town, the repair man working among the cargo who accidentally broke a slat on a crate of oranges. Inside the liner of oranges were-queer-looking rifles-atomic? Three Eggs carefully packed in foam-rubber? Unconscious humans en route to a secret Baldy vivisection lab?

  Then an invisible breath seemed to sweep through the hot, still air.

  It was the paranoid aura. As, in grand mal, the epileptic attack is presaged by an indefinable feeling of impending disaster, so the physical approach of a paranoid carries before it the shadowy halo pulsing outward from the distorted mind. Cody had felt this before, b
ut each time he knew afresh the same faint shrinking, as though his contact with the bright, hot, green world around him had thinned and snapped for an instant.

  He turned slowly and crossed the street, threading past the uneasy, murmuring groups of unshaved men, past their hostile stares. Ahead was a little restaurant-the Copter Vane Eatery. The aura thickened. Cody stopped outside of the door of the restaurant and reached out telepathically.

  The rumors flew past him. A man knew a man who had a Baldy neighbor who lost three fingers in a duel a month ago, and today had three fingers growing as good as new, grafted on in a private Baldy hospital. (But Baldies won't duel--never mind that!) They could work miracles in medicine now, but you didn't see them doing it for humans, did you? If they weren't stopped soon, who could tell what might happen next?

  Stiff with arrogance, wary with suspicion, the mind of Jasper Horne, within the restaurant, sent out its own murky thoughts too-egotistical, prideful, sensitive, and inflexible. And there was a dim thought stirring in that cloudy mind, like an ember under gray ash, fading and brightening again into half-clarity, which made Cody, at the restaurant's door, pause and stiffen into immobility for fear that the telepathic paranoid might sense his presence.

  Horne had not come to American Gun to start a pogrom.

  His real motive was far more deadly. It was—

  What?

  That was what Cody could not see-yet. He had glimpsed the shadow of a thought, and that glimpse had been enough to flash a sharp warning to his mind, a signal of terrible urgency. Home's real motive lay deeply buried. But it had to be found out. Cody felt quite certain of that.

  He stepped aside, leaned against the wall of the building, and glanced idly around, while from under the Mute helmet his mind probed very delicately and sensitively toward Home.