Baldy

by Henry Kuttner

  Gently... gently.

  The paranoid was sitting alone in a booth near the back of the restaurant. His thoughts were clouded with repression. And he was concentrating on his lunch, not consciously thinking of the thing which had drifted across the surface of his mind for a triumphant instant. Unless this concept was summoned into consciousness, Cody could not read it without deep probing, which Horne would immediately sense. Yet there was a way. The right cues would summon up the appropriate responses in any mind. But those cues would have to be implanted in Home's thoughts very delicately, so that they would seem perfectly natural, and his own. Cody looked across the street, beyond the murmuring knots of men, at the Last Chance. Horne had been there half an hour ago. It was a fan: cue. He sent the concept Last Chance softly into Home's mind.

  And that mind flinched warily, searched, found nothing (the Mute helmet guarded Cody), and then the cue summoned up its responses.

  Last Chance gambling but I'm the one who's really gambling with them all of them their lives I can kill them all if in time--the thought--chain broke as videomusic swelled within the restaurant. Horne lifted his fork and began to eat again.

  Cody fitted the beat of his thought to the music's beat and sent the message to Horne.

  Kill them all kill them all kill them all.

  Loose the virus, Home's response came to the stimulus he thought was his own. Pomerance is getting closer every day control the resonance mutate a virus kill them all kill them all KILL THEM ALL!

  Cody braced himself against the red rage that poured out from the paranoid.

  Pomerance, he thought. Pomerance. Pomerance in the labs, Home thought, and formed a sensory image. Not far away-only two blocks away-were the research laboratories of American Gun, and in them was a man named Pomerance, a biochemist, a nontelepath. He was working on a certain experiment which--if it succeeded-- would enable the paranoids to develop a virus as deadly and as specialized as the virus of Operation Apocalypse.

  And this was the real reason for Home's presence in American Gun. The pogrom-plan was a cover-up. It was camouflage to deceive the Baldies, while Home went about his real purpose of telepathically following Pomerance's experiments toward the goal of an Operation Apocalypse brought about by the paranoids themselves.

  Pomerance was not aiming at such a goal, of course. He was a biochemist; his aim was to develop a more efficient bacteriophage-but the method he would need to develop that could also be applied to far deadlier aims.

  Gently Cody manipulated the paranoid's mind. He learned a little more. Pomerance might fail--Home realized that. But in that case, then the pogrom could be set off. It would be better to find and use a human-killing virus, for in a pogrom paranoid lives would be lost too-but there would be a pogrom if no better way offered. Conditions were ripe. Home had built the tension in American Gun; he had located the potential mob-leaders; he could start the pogrom at any time he desired-and that would be the signal for other paranoids across the nation to do the same. That universal pogrom would force the Baldies to release Operation Apocalypse --so the same end would be achieved. But it would be better to wait a little, just a little, following Pomerance's experiments closely. He seemed to be very near his goal.

  Too near, Cody thought, his body swaying a little toward the restaurant's door. He was wasting time. Kill Home, kill him now, he told himself--but hesitated still, because there was something else in the paranoid's mind that puzzled him. Too much confidence was built on that twisted, shaky foundation of paranoid personality. There must be some reason for that surprising lack of anxiety.

  Cody probed again with careful cues that brushed the other mind lightly. Yes, there was a reason. There was a bomb hidden in Pomerance's laboratory.

  Why?

  Home had that information, and Cody gently extracted it. The biochemist must not be allowed to fall alive into the hands of Baldies. The bomb was triggered to explode whenever Home summoned to consciousness a certain complex of symbols-the paranoid's mind shifted quickly away from that dangerous equation-and it would also explode if Home's mind stopped thinking.

  That is, if Home died.

  Like the pattern of a burglar alarm, an interruption in the flow of current, the radiations emitted constantly by Home's mind sleeping or waking, would break the circuit and set off the alarm-the bomb that would kill Pomerance. Cody saw the location of that bomb very clearly in Home's mental image of the laboratory.

  So, if he killed Home, Pomerance would die too. But why was this important to the paranoid?

  Cody probed again, and suddenly understood the reason.

  Pomerance's research was centered around resonance differential applied to the nucleoproteins that were viruses. But there were other types of nucleoproteins; the telepathic function itself depended on the resonance of nucleoproteins in the human brain. If Pomerance's experiment succeeded, it would mean....

  It would mean that telepathy could be induced in a nontelepath!

  It was the answer to the problem of the Inductor, the one answer that could solve the universal problem of a world in schism. In the hands of the paranoids, Pomerance's method could destroy all humans. In the hands of the Baldies, it could make all mankind one. It could--

  Suddenly Cody knew that Home had discovered his presence.

  Instantly Home began to build in his mind the equation" that would set off the bomb in Pomerance's laboratory. Cody's mind leaped into the future. He could kill Home before the paranoid had finished, but if he did that, the other's death would trigger the bomb with equal certainty. Pomerance would die-and that must not be allowed to happen. More than lives depended on the biochemist's survival.

  There was no way to stop Home's thoughts except one. Cody's probing into the other's mind had told him a great deal about that proud, inflexible, unsure personality. He now knew

  more about Home than the latter himself did. And he had discovered one vital point. Home was not psychotic; he had not lost touch with reality, but, like many paranoids, he had psychopathological symptoms, and one of these was his strong tendency to what Allenby would have called hypnogogic hallucinations-vivid sensory images occurring in the drowsy state just before sleep. And such hallucinations can easily be produced by hypnosis.

  All Cody had to do was to convince Home that he had momentarily been hallucinated. That, and a little more--a good deal more.

  At least, Cody had a good insight into what forms such imagery would take for the paranoid, with his strong delusions of persecution and grandeur. So Cody projected the idea that he, representing the Baldies, had come to Home to offer a truce, to make a pact with the paranoids against the humans-exactly the kind of vivid wish-fulfilling fantasy Home must often have experienced. And at the same time he summoned up the mental image of Jasper Home and let Home see…

  That action was natural enough, even within the frame of an hallucination. When you communicate with another, you visualize him in your own mind, in many more dimensions than the purely visual ones. Your impressions of his emotional patterns, his memories, his thoughts, the complex image of his whole personality as you perceive it, is summoned up as a subjective correlative of the objective man with whom you communicate. The burning brightness of that Luciferean image stood clear between the meeting minds, blazingly sharp and vivid, in a way that the murky mind of the paranoid had never known.

  The ancient Greeks knew what the mechanism of identification meant-they told the story of Narcissus. And the lure caught Jasper Home, who could identify with no other man than himself, or a god made in his own image. His paranoid egotism reflected itself in that ego-image and was reflected again and so endlessly, while Cody delicately tested and touched the thoughts of the other and watched for the first slackening of consciousness.

  At least Home had paused in his mental building of the concept that would destroy Pomerance. The paranoid hesitated, unsure, his grasp of reality telling him that the Baldies could not, would not send an emissary to capitulate, and that therefore
his senses, which had warned him of Cody's presence, had lied. Such panics were not unknown to Home. So he could accept—tentatively--the suggestion that his senses had tricked him.

  Very, very gently, still maintaining that dazzling ego-image of Jasper Home like a glittering lure on a baited hook, Cody sent quiet cue-thoughts slipping into the hesitant mind. At first they were obviously true thoughts, true, at least, according to the paranoid's system of belief. They were pleasant, reassuring thoughts. Lulled, Home watched the ego-image which he himself had often summoned up-yet never before so clearly and dazzlingly. Narcissus watched his image in the clear, deep pool of Cody's mind.

  So, sitting alone in the restaurant booth, Home let his wariness relax little by little, and Cody's soft assault moved into a new area. The thoughts Cody sent out now were not quite true, but still not false enough to startle the paranoid, who took them for his own thoughts. I've had these hallucinations before. Usually just before going to sleep. I'm having them now. So I must be going to sleep. I am sleepy. My eyelids feel heavy....

  The lulling, monotonous thoughts began to submerge Home's consciousness. Gradually the hypnosis grew. Narcissus watched Narcissus....

  Sleep, sleep, Cody's mind whispered. You will not waken until I command you. Nothing else will waken you. Sleep deeply-sleep.

  The paranoid slept.

  Cody began to run along the street as fast as he could. No other Baldy in American Gun was nearer to the research laboratory than he was, and if Pomerance were to be saved, it was his job alone. And he might easily fail. Jasper Home was sitting in hypnotic sleep in a crowded restaurant, and at any moment someone might speak to him or shake him back into consciousness. The hypnosis was not deep. It might hold, or it might break at any moment. In spite of Cody's final suggestions to the paranoid, the latter could be awakened quite easily, and by anyone.

  Cody ran on. Suppose he got Pomerance out of the lab in time? Could he get back to the restaurant again before Home wakened?

  No, Cody thought, the hypnosis isn't deep enough. It'll be a miracle if Home stays under more than a few minutes. If I can save Pomerance, that will be miracle enough.

  But as soon as Home realizes what's happened, he won't wait. He'll start the pogrom. It's all ready, here in American Gun; he's planted the dynamite, and all he has to do is touch the detonator. All right. I can't be sure that what I'm doing is right. I think it is. I can't be sure. If I save Pomerance, Home will probably start the pogrom before I can get back and kill him. But I can't let Pomerance die; he can solve the problem of the Inductor.

  Hurry!

  He ran toward a group of long, low buildings. He knew the way; he had seen it in Home's mind. He ran toward one of the buildings, thrust open the door, and was in the laboratory.

  A gaunt, gray-haired man in a stained smock turned to stare at him. It was Pomerance; no telepath can ever be mistaken on a question of identity. It was Pomerance--and as Cody realized that, he also realized that two blocks away, in the Copter Vane Eatery, Jasper Home had stirred, wakened, and reached out in sudden panic to touch Pomerance's mind.

  Instantly Cody was racing down the length of the long laboratory. Beyond Pomerance were floor-length windows opening on hot sunlight, blue sky, and parched brown grass. If they could reach the windows--

  It seemed to Cody that he crossed the room in no time at all. No time, and yet another kind of time seemed to draw out endlessly as, in the distant mind of the paranoid, he saw the triggering equation building up that would set off the bomb's mechanism. Now the equation was complete. Now time would stop in one bursting moment of death.

  Yet there was time. Cody sent out a wordless call, a summons that rang like a great alarm bell in the minds of every Baldy in American Gun. At the same moment he reached Pomerance and used his own momentum to lift the other man bodily as he plunged toward the windows. Then the floor rose underfoot and the air rushed outward before the first soundless compression wave that moved in front of the explosion.

  The window loomed before them, bright, high, patterned with small panes. Cody's shoulder struck, he felt wood and glass shatter without a sound because of the great, white, bursting roar of the explosion, louder than any sound could be.

  The blast exploded in a white blindness all around him and beyond shattering glass the void opened up under him.

  He was falling with Pomerance through hot, dry outdoor air and darkness, darkness in the full heat of the sun, falling and turning while glass rained down around them and the noise of the explosion went on and on forever....

  In front of the Copter Vane Eatery two transients scuffled. Jasper Home, in the crowd, said something under his breath. Another man repeated it, louder. One of the transients flushed darkly. (It was a trigger-phrase as certain to rouse this man's aggressions as the equation that had exploded the bomb.) In a moment a dagger was pulled from its sheath, and a full-fledged duel was in progress in the middle of a noisy circle. The winner was a hairy-faced, hairy-chested man with a partially bald head. His knife-work had been very deft and sure. Too sure, Jasper Home said in a loud whisper. The whispers flew around the circle. Anybody could win a duel if he could read the other man's mind. If They could grow fingers maybe they could grow hair.

  Jasper Home said something, exactly the right something, to the potential mob-leader beside him.

  The potential mob-leader scowled, swore, and took a step forward. Deftly he tripped the winner from behind as he was sheathing his dagger. The knife flew spinning across the pavement. Three men were on the falling baldhead as he went down. Two of them held him while the third tugged at his tonsure-fringe of hair. It held. The victim bellowed with rage and resisted so strongly that four or five bystanders were sent sprawling. One of them lost his wig....

  This was neither sleep nor waking. It was Limbo. He floated in the womb of non-self, the only real privacy a telepath can ever know, and what he wanted was to stay here forever and ever. But he was a telepath. He could not, even in the secret fastness of his own mind, pretend what was not true, for his mind lay quite open-at least to wearers of the Mute helmets like his own.

  Yet it was hard to waken. It was hard to force himself, of his own volition, to stoop and pick up whatever burdens might be waiting for him, new and old. If his life could be lived as had been the last minute he remembered, without any indecision or unsureness, but with only the certain need for physical action (is Pomerance alive, something in his wakening mind asked),if then it would be easy indeed to lift himself up out of this warm, gray silence which was so infinitely restful, without even dreams (but Pomerance?).

  And as always, the thought of another made something in Cody brace and lift itself with weary stubbornness. Instantly he was oriented. He did not need to depend on his own sleep-confused senses alone. All through the Caves, and above them, and in copters in midair, was a stirring and a confused sense of urgency and troubled motion, and each mind held one thought under whatever other thoughts might be preoccupying the upper levels of the mind.

  The thought was pogrom.

  Cody asked one question: Should I have killed Home instead of trying to save Pomerance? But he did not wait for an answer. The decision had been his own, after all. He opened his eyes (knowing in what infirmary bed in what sector of the Caves he lay) and looked up at the round, ruddy face of Allenby.

  "Pomerance?" he asked.

  "Alive," the psychologist answered wordlessly. "Some of the American Gun Baldies got to you right after the explosion. They had to work fast. Home had set off the pogrom. But they had a fast copter ready, and gave you and Pomerance first aid en route. That was two days ago."

  "Two days?"

  "Pomerance was unconscious for only a few hours. But we kept you under till now-you needed it. However, I guess you'll live, in case you're wondering."

  "How long will any of us live?" Cody's thought whispered.

  "Get up and dress," Allenby ordered. "There's work to be done. Here's your clothes. How long? I don't know. The pogr
om's been spreading for two days. The paranoids had everything very neatly planned. It looks like a total pogrom this time, Jeff. But we've got Pomerance. And I think we've got the Inductor."

  "But Pomerance isn't one of us."

  "He's with us, though. Not all humans are anti-Baldy, thank God. As soon as Pomerance understood the situation, he voluntarily offered to help in any way he could. So come along. We're ready to try the Inductor. I wanted you to be there. Can you manage?"

  Cody nodded. He was stiff, and quite weak, and there were a good many aches and pains under the sprayed-on plastic bandages, but it felt fine to stand up and walk. He followed Allenby out into the corridor and along it. The troubled, urgent stirring of innumerable thoughts moved all around him. He remembered Lucy. Not all humans are anti-Baldy. And not all Baldies are anti-human, he added, thinking of what had been done to the humans like Lucy who had been condemned to life imprisonment within the Caves.

  "She'll be there--in the lab," Allenby told Cody. "She offered to be one of the subjects. We've got an Inductor jury-rigged according to Pomerance's theory-at least, we started with his theory and went on from there, every scientist among us. It was quite a job. I hope--" The thought of the pogrom shadowed Allenby's mind briefly and was repressed. Cody thought: I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time....

  "Yes," the psychologist agreed. "Later, Jeff. Later. The Inductor is our goal right now. Nothing else. You haven't thought of Jasper Home since you woke up, have you?"

  Cody realized that he had scarcely done so. Now, as he did, he saw the paranoid leader as something remote and depersonalized, a moving figure in a great complex of action, but no longer the emotion-charged target of his hate.

  "I guess I don't feel the need to kill him," Cody agreed. "He's not really important any more. The worst he could do was start the pogrom, and he's done that. I'd kill him if I had the chance, but for a different reason-now." He glanced at Allenby. "Will the Inductor work?" he asked.

  "That's what we're going to find out. But it ought to, it ought to," Allenby said, opening a door in the wall of the corridor. Cody followed the psychologist into one of the caverns which had been made into an experimental laboratory.