Psi Hunt

by Kurland, Michael

  I wonder what’s going to happen to her? Hell, I wonder what’s going to happen to us. They must have something in mind.

  Sure. With enough telepaths working for me I could rule the world. Exit smirking and twirling moustache. The question is: can they make us work for them against our will?

  It’s not a question, Leah replied. Yes. I know how it can be done. I have seen it done. She remembered the skinny, pale girl lying on the hospital bed, screaming in a language she could not understand.

  A white-robed man came into the room and went over to the girls, examining each of them searchingly, in turn, without actually touching them. Then he turned and gestured to the man at the computer terminal, who nodded, got up, and left the room. Then the Prophet Lassama, red robes flapping around him, strode in. “Only three?” he asked, looking sadly at the motionless women.

  “It’s a good day’s work,” the man in white said, emotionlessly.

  “Yes, but three out of eight hundred and sixty-four thousand is not exactly a high percentage. I had hoped for better.”

  “We explained all this to you before. Father Lassama,” the man said. “We were unable to scan the whole crowd, only something over a hundred thousand. Then, even with the amp-crystals installed, we must have missed a hell of a lot of responses. It’s one thing to be able to electronically amplify a telepathic carrier thought so that it covers a whole section of the Bowl, but it’s quite another to hear and pinpoint the responses.”

  The Prophet Lassama turned.”Don’t give me any of that scientific bullshit,” he said. “I need sensitives! And what do I get? For all that work I end up with three little girls—and one of ’em’s a spy.”

  “You also made something like fifteen million dollars clear in this operation,” the white-robed acolyte reminded the Prophet.

  “You think I do this for the money? With all the money I’ve got, you think I need more? This is all going to the local broods. What I want are the telepaths. You’re going to have to work out some better techniques.”

  “With fifteen telepaths under your control money becomes redundant,” agreed the man in white. He went around to each of the girls and daubed an oily liquid on her neck.

  What’s going on? Leah asked the other girl. What’s going to happen to us?

  I don’t have any precognitive ability that I know of, the girl sent back. Would you like my guess?

  I think not. Leah’s muscles were beginning to work again, and the first indication was pain—a dull ache that spread over her entire body as the muscles protested having been frozen for the past several hours. The ache quickly became a tingle, and then an itch, as control and feeling returned. Leah’s first voluntary motion was to start scratching herself, quickly and violently, all over. The girl across from her did the same. The third girl doubled up, drawing her legs up to her chest, and fell off the chair. She lay there on the rug with no further motion.

  “Is that the spy?” the prophet demanded, indicating the girl on the floor.

  “No, Father Lassama.”

  “Shit! One spy and one catatonic out of three. Leaving us with a grand profit of one from a hundred thousand. Get rid of the zombie.”

  “What about the spy?”

  “From Astral Emprise, you say? Stupid of her to come here with her identification papers in her pocketbook; but then I don’t suppose she expected to be picked up. Which one is she?”

  The man in white pointed to Leah, and the prophet examined her with a cattle-buyer’s eye. “Pity,” he said, “but as long as we’ll have to get rid of her anyway. . . . Take the other girl away, I will attend to this one.”

  The white-robed assistant pulled the girl to her feet and half carried her out of the room. Good-bye, the girl called. Good luck!

  You too. Hang on!

  “Now, then,” the Prophet Lassama said, his eyes gleaming. “As long as we’re going to have to get rid of you anyhow. . . . We wouldn’t want it to be a total waste. . . . Such a pretty thing . . .” He advanced toward Leah with the positive stride of a battleship in heat.

  How fucking Victorian, Leah thought.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Great Albee Theater in Santa Dorothea was a massive relic of the bygone age of thirty-five millimeter film, third balconies, and wide-angle lenses. It had been empty and shuttered long before the holo stage replaced the screen. The real estate agent whose sign was in the window of the ticket booth had to check his records to find out who owned the property.

  “You want to tear it down, of course,” he said smoothly. “Build a restaurant, or a sniffhall, or a dwelling complex. It’s zoned A-five. No Gibbles or poolhalls, or anything over thirty stories without clearance. Great investment property. Growing section of town; growing.”

  “You misunderstand,” George Hing said, clasping his hands. “I looked for a large barn located in a slum; this was the closest thing I could find. Not as good; cluttered with rusty seats and dangerous overhangs, but I shall make do. I only wish to rent, you understand.”

  “Ah, yes,” the real estate agent said, changing his tack. “Great rental property. Over on the far west side of town. By the Navy base. Wonderful spot for some sort of entertainment facility. Fortune waiting for the right man.”

  Hing silently cursed the faceless man in the accounting office of the Ministry of Culture, Foreign Intelligence Subsection, who audited his reports and complained about every tael. “Navy base, you say? Is it very close? That won’t do at all. Far too much noise. All those sailors. Vibration is very bad for the instruments.”

  The real estate man gave up. “Five miles from the base,” he admitted. “Haven’t rented it since my father retired. Let you have it cheap. Very quiet. You’ll have to do any repairs or renovations yourself.”

  Hing moved in two days later. Some of the repairs he made were unorthodox; some of the renovations were unique. All changes were interior; the only difference in the appearance of the front was the removal of the FOR RENT OR SALE sign.

  Forty years’ dust was removed from the orchestra. Hing and the younger Sen and the rest of the cell wielded mops and pails and sponges and dustcloths until you could actually find a few of the remaining patches of gilt on the cherubs. Several of the aisle seats were cleaned and oiled until they could be raised and lowered without squeaking and sat in without puffing dust. Three rows of seats at the front were completely removed, and five army surplus hospital beds were put in their place. The electrical system for the theater was marveled at and cussed over until it did what was required of it.

  Special care was lavished on the ancient screen. It was untwisted until it was straight, sewn until it was whole, and washed until it was white. Then the projection booth was cleaned and rewired and painted and fumigated. Newly-renovated projectors and sound equipment bought at Los Angeles nostalgia shops were installed in the booth.

  “And that,” Hing said, putting the last checkmark on his list, “is that. We are ready for the human element. Bring in the receptors and install them on the beds.”

  Four girls and a boy—four female receptors and a male receptor—were led in and placed on their hospital beds. The black boxes that metered the rhythm of their being were fastened to forehead and upper arm. Slowly the drug doses were increased and the mixture of drugs was altered to turn them from docile, suggestible androids to talkative telepathic devices. The five-track tape recorder was started and the monitors took their places.

  “The theory is quite simple,” Hing explained to the group. “We are as close to the Lucius Mendel Rivers Experimental Underwater Base as we can reasonably expect to get. Therefore we can assume that many of the thought waves—or particles; I don’t want to argue theory—penetrating this baroque hulk of a theater will be from the base. If our information is correct, and this is the supply point for the seafloor bases, then a good percentage of those thoughts will be about the top secret program. The greatest bulk of the arriving thoughts, however, will not be of, from, or about the sea. What we have to d
o is program our receptors to be particularly sensitive to sea-oriented thinking.”

  Hing waved his hand and the theater was dimmed to darkness. A martial music, faintly reminiscent of waves, reached the ear. On the screen appeared the flickering image of the MGM lion. It steadied as the ancient projector got up to speed, then the beast looked out of its golden frame and roared at its small audience.

  An underwater scene appeared on the screen, and a World War Two fleet type submarine slowly cruised across the screen from right to left, leaving an ocean of bubbles in its wake. The steady ping, ping, of sonar sounded through the loudspeakers, and the titles began to roll up the screen:

  C R U S A D E U N D E R T H E S E A !

  And, following, came a boatload of forgotten actors’ names and a tender of cameramen, props, makeup, grips, and all the other technicians it took to fight a war in front of Hollywood sound cameras. And then, as the director’s name disappeared off the top of the screen the scene changed to the inside of the submarine, and the war began.

  Hing stood fascinated before this flat spectacle for some time before retreating to the monitor booth.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The ship riding at the end of the jetty was a thirty-two-gun frigate of the Hood class; the prototype authorized by Congress in the summer of 1775. The last of her class, her keel laid two hundred years after the last round ball was fired in anger at a British ship by an American, she was the only one whose guns had never been run out in battle. Her timbers were nonrotting plastic, her masts were fiberglass, and her sails were nylon; but her boards still creaked in a heavy sea and her sails snapped in a four-knot breeze till the lady came alive in a way an iron ship never could.

  She was the Alfred, named, as a plaque in the gangway explained, after the first ship John Paul Jones had commanded under an American flag.

  “Beautiful!” Robert whispered, peering around the corner of a warehouse.

  “Our objective,” Friendly said, straightening his collar and adjusting the fall of his cape. He inhaled the sea breeze and seemed to fill out slightly, as though the salt air in his lungs made him more massive.

  “The ship? Why?”

  “I have a sixth sense about these things. Have trust.”

  Robert sat down on the concrete ledge that ran around the warehouse. “I have the feeling that there’s something you’re not telling me. You’re clairvoyant. You always know more than you should know.”

  Friendly industriously brushed his hat for a minute before settling it carefully over his thick hair. “You’re right,” he said, looking up. “But it’s not clairvoyance. I’m telepathic. Mildly.”

  Robert stared. He couldn’t help it. He could feel the blood rushing to his head as he tried not to think whatever he was thinking about without thinking about it; or was he trying to think about what he’d been thinking without thinking that he was thinking about it? He felt as though he had just been discovered walking naked down the street. “You can read my mind? Now? Without drugs?”

  “Stop staring. Yes, I can. I don’t go around doing it for fun.”

  “You were inside my head when I was tripping on silver ice.”

  “That was a must.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. I’m glad you told me.”

  “You would have figured it out.”

  “I thought the telepathic effects of silver ice were only temporary.”

  “They are for most people. For some, constant use will leave a residual effect. Some can be shocked over the threshold by an exterior telepathic experience while they’re under the influence of silver ice and a hypnotic.”

  “Which way were you—”

  “None of the above. My case is peculiar, I might even say unique. I will: unique.” Friendly paused, arranging the story in his mind so that it could be told without the overload of emotion that was semantically tied to the words.

  “Many years ago, shortly after I received my commission, I was assigned to Special Weapons Branch. This was while the Navy still had special weapons. My job was rather delicate, so delicate, in fact, that they never got around to telling me what it was. I thought I was coordinating officer between a development group working on a deep-water launch vehicle and a Naval Specifications Board that had to approve modifications to the existing platforms—missile subs and the like. It was a very important job for a young ensign to hold, and I suffered from overweaning conceit.

  “That summer I went on a two-week leave to go scuba diving in the South Pacific. I was very big on scuba diving; had it been possible. I would have had neck gills grafted. The first two days I spent mostly under water. That second night I went to sleep exhausted and happy in my hotel room. When I woke up I was strapped to a table in the middle of a circular, white-tile-walled room. There were mirrors spotted high on the wall, all around; one-way glass, I assume. I had no idea how long I’d been there or what they wanted with me. I didn’t even know who they were.

  “They let me lie there for some time, on the principle that the expectation of the unknown is a worse horror than anything the unknown can bring. Usually. Then a man came in. He was dressed like a doctor or a lab technician; green smock and cap. No mask. He had the smuggest, most self-satisfied look I’ve ever seen on anyone’s face. Obviously he’d just done, or was about to do, something damned clever; and I didn’t think I’d like whatever it was. I developed in that instant a great desire to destroy that smug face, to— Excuse me. I’m getting involved with my memories. No need for all this detail.”

  “I understand,” Robert said. He searched his mind for something appropriate to add, something comforting, and found nothing.

  “He told me what they wanted from me, this smug gentleman, and how they were planning to get it. What they wanted was me—my information on special weapons and my continued cooperation. They had only two weeks to accomplish this, and they couldn’t leave any visible scars if I was going to be useful to them.”

  “Drugs?” Robert asked.

  “The technique they employed is known as sensory deprivation. It involves the use of drugs, along with more mechanical devices.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Robert said.

  “At first I was glad, grateful, convinced they were making a great mistake. Physical pain was something I had never experienced—at least not prolonged, deliberate application of it—and I was afraid that I’d turn out to be a coward. But mental stress—that was something else! My mind was inviolate. Nothing could break my strength of will—as long as it didn’t hurt.

  “They started isolating my senses, one at a time. My ears were plugged, my eyes were blindfolded, I was put into a special balloon suit and immersed in blood-temperature water, and a carefully-calculated drug dose was shot into my buttocks. I could not see, or hear, or smell, or feel. I lost all sense of orientation. I lost all feeling in my own body. But my mind, my brain, was completely alert.

  “Try to picture what that means. My mind completely alert, but with no external input to work on—nothing at all. At first I didn’t think it would bother me; I had always conceived of myself as having unlimited mental resources. Playing mental chess, working out the set of prime numbers, going in fine detail over my past life to analyze each bit, creating whole fantasy worlds of my own inside my head; the possibilities were endless. The only problem would be which to begin first.

  “Then I started to feel it. The first sign was time disorientation. I had no idea of how much time had passed, or how quickly time was passing. I started counting, but when I counted I couldn’t think of anything else, and I had no idea how fast I was going. It became very important to me to know how much time had passed. And I mean I had no idea: minutes, hours, days. Finally I became convinced that years had passed.

  “Then I thought, no, that couldn’t be because I’d starve to death. That reassured me until I realized I’d never know if they started feeding me intravenously. Then I was convinced that at least a month had already passed. They were only going to keep me for two
weeks, but supposing something had happened? Maybe I was being tended by automatic machinery and they had all died or gone away. I told myself how unlikely that was, but it was possible, and the mere possibility, however unlikely, almost drove me mad right then.

  “Then something else hit. It felt like whole bundles of nerves were knotted together and screaming inside my head. Not in pain, but in frustration. I had no idea of what was actually happening, or what was causing it. There was something missing. I tried to figure out what it was so I could supply it. I still had some hope of not going insane, but this was precariously balanced with the real possibility that I was already insane.

  “What was missing, I finally realized, was background: all the extraneous sounds, sights, smells, and feelings that must be shut out if you are going to focus on anything, yet constantly monitored in case of sudden emergency. The monitoring circuits, if you’ll excuse an electronic analogy, had nothing to act on, and were setting up a sort of feedback loop. That’s an appallingly inexact description, but it conveys the idea. There are no words.

  “As time passed, at whatever rate it was going by, I slowly learned to control the inside of my own head. Either that or I went completely insane, I’ve never been exactly sure which. I planned and thought and organized. I even slept. Then I started a concerted effort to reach the outside world. The first thing I found was my own heartbeat. At first I could hear it, later I could control it.

  “I strained to locate the universe outside my own head. And, after God knows how long, I heard voices. At least, I thought they were voices. Faint, unintelligible, they came in a weaving pattern of almost-discernible sense. I listened, dropping all attempt to do anything else, trying to suppress the conviction that my precious voices were the imaginings of a now-insane mind. Finally, I was able to put aside my worry about insanity when I realized that, sane or insane, I would have to act the same. I had to treat my sensory input as real, it was all I had.