The Lost Perception

by Daniel F. Galouye

  Why, Gregson wondered, must Lanier shield his thoughts with a suppressor? So that those who were about to be culled out of the Academy at Versailles wouldn’t learn of their impending elimination? But if that were the purpose, then certainly Simmons’ body would have been spirited away. Was this, then, also a warning to others?

  Dismayed, he struck out for the palace. The elements of his confusion were profound: Simmons’ murder, the power obsession that seemed to grip almost everybody at Versailles, his own devious sixth-sense indoctrination when he should instead be going about the task of reconditioning Vega Jumpoff Station, Karen’s suggestion that the Security Bureau’s authority might be extended indefinitely, Lander’s cloak of secrecy.

  And he wondered whether he might eventually zylph what was in the superintendent’s mind, as Simmons had done. But, even if the opportunity presented itself, did he possess that degree of rault sensitivity? And, now that he had considered this course of action, how could he hope to avoid having his possible intentions zylphed?

  It suddenly occurred to him that, since his suspicions had condensed so clearly, he might not be any safer at Versailles than Simmons had been. But how could he escape?

  * * *

  Fortunately, the stygumness remained impenetrable. Even without the benefit of the Stygumbra’s metadarkness, however, Gregson’s thoughts would have remained private.

  For, throughout both the morning and afternoon session, the instructor kept a rault suppressor in view on the table, its pilot bulb indicating constant output.

  While Alvarez labored the point that rault was propagated at infinite velocity and that sixth-sense impressions were transmitted instantaneously, Gregson worried over the possibility that his own rebellious thoughts might at any moment be laid bare by the instructor’s sudden employment of a rault caster.

  Toward the end of the late afternoon session, his attention was drawn partly back to the lecture when Alvarez spread his arms and said, “Can you think of the historic connotations suggested by Chandeen, by Earth’s current movement out of the Stygumbra?”

  When there was no answer, he leaned back against a marble bust of Louis XIV. “Ah, yes—and mythological implications too. Consider that some fifty thousand years ago, Earth moved behind the Stygum Field. As that time man was probably in his infancy, aesthetically inclined, his society developing along nonmaterialistic lines.

  “As Earth entered the Stygumbra, it must have been as severe a physiological incapacitation as if modern man should suddenly be forced into a world of eternal darkness. There must have been intellectual regression, reversion to savagery. Is it any wonder we should have the allegorical account of man’s Banishment from Paradise?”

  After a pause, he continued with animated gestures.

  “Yes, I am suggesting that life based on transsensory perception might be more fulfilling, more profound than we could possibly conceive of now. We are just on the brink of glial receptivity. It may be years before the faculty is fully realized. We are merely infants, opening the eyes a few moments after birth.”

  His voice rose, almost trembling. “Don’t you understand? In a society in which everybody zylphs, there will be room only for the strong-willed! Bourgeois affection for self-determination will be instantly exposed! There will be no chance for sanctuary in private thought. No one will have even an initial opportunity to reject the body of accepted behavior subscribed to by the group.”

  Gregson was appalled by the philosophical discourse. But if zylphing were so desirable, from that fanatical perspective, and if the Security Bureau subscribed to this philosophy, then wasn’t it unlikely that the bureau would envelop the world in total, permanent stygumness just to stop the Screamie epidemic?

  Gregson felt certain he was caught up in just such a conspiracy. But where could he verify that suspicion? Here at Versailles? At 17 Rue de la Serenite in Paris?

  Alvarez was still talking about his “body of accepted behavior subscribed to by the group.” And it occurred to Gregson that the Latin was laying ideological groundwork. For the “group” could be intended to imply not humanity as a whole, but merely the bureaucratic oligarchy. In which case the “accepted behavior” would certainly not conform with any previous appreciation of morality.

  The lecture ended and students and instructor alike began filing through the doorway.

  Reluctantly, Gregson followed.

  Out there in the corridor—beyond the field of the classroom’s rault suppressor—would there be sufficient natural hyperradiation to convey his unsubmissive convictions to the others? Would his escape attempt be blocked?

  Then, from up ahead, he heard the Irish girl Sharon O’Rourke exclaim, “Oh, zylph the rault! It’s returning in full force! And there’s Chandeen! Isn’t it glorious?”

  He eased back into the room. Uncertain, he crossed over to the table and studied the rault suppressor. If such a device could shield Lanier’s thoughts, then why not his own? Of course, he would have to avoid others until he had a chance to escape—so that they wouldn’t wonder why he could be seen but not zylphed.

  Thrusting the suppressor into his pocket, he stepped cautiously into the now deserted corridor.

  * * *

  Only as he welcomed the descent of deep twilight, beside one of the Grecian statues in a chestnut grove, did he savor the success that had attended the first phase of his flight to safety. And he settled down to await a later hour when the guard would have been changed and vigilance possibly relaxed—visually, at least.

  Before then, however, his gaze was attracted by Lanier’s lighted cottage, not too far from the grove. Between him and the superintendent’s home there were few obstructions… and no guards.

  Would a trip there perhaps provide an opportunity to zylph the secrets hidden behind that dense brow which remained perpetually within the fortress of a rault suppressor?

  Boldly, he struck out for the cottage.

  He had to peer into a number of windows before he located the superintendent—slumped in a massive wing chair, eyes closed and jowls spread out upon his chest. On the table were a silver ice bucket, from which protruded the neck of an unstoppered wine bottle, and an energized rault suppressor. Beside the latter was a rault caster, its function revealed by the glowing green light below the dial.

  Sight of a suppressor and caster in operation at the same time puzzled Gregson—until he surmised that a smaller field of rault could be generated within a larger field of projected stygumness, like a light bulb shining in darkness. That arrangement would allow Lanier to zylph things in his immediate area, while preventing rault-borne impressions from escaping through the greater sphere of metadarkness.

  He tried two more windows before he found one unlocked. Snoring sounds led him to Lanier’s study, but he hesitated in the hallway. It was apparent that the superintendent’s sleep, induced most likely by a full bottle of wine, was profound indeed.

  Gregson turned off his suppressor and, as anticipated, discovered that the greater field of the room’s suppressor still prevented him from zylphing. But, approaching Lanier, he started when a flood of rault enveloped his glial receptors. Instantly he was zylphing everything in the superintendent’s immediate vicinity.

  He drew back into the stygumness, but not before he had verified the man’s drunkenness. The rault-borne impressions were unmistakable—the chemical wrongness of alcohol in his system, deadening his brain cells, stifling his glial sensitivity.

  * * *

  Then Gregson pushed back into the inner field of rault. He turned aside the torrential flood of transsensory impressions that assailed him from each prominent and microscopically insignificant feature within the sphere. He directed his attention instead to the superintendent’s mind, trying for the first time to detect unconscious thought.

  And, vaguely, he began to sense major attitudes—an expectation of power, a thirst for strength. Now the abstract concepts were becoming more zylphable. The imperium of which he dreamed seemed to have been pro
mised by the oligarchy. He appeared to have been assured supreme authority over all of France, perhaps the entire continent.

  It all added up to a single concept that seemed to be emblazoned smugly, boastfully across the superintendent’s mind—a concept that hinted of a conspiracy so bold, so vast that it defied convenient description.

  And, as though he had sensed it somehow from the other’s unconscious thoughts, Gregson realized his own presence at Versailles had been required so that, while being instructed in hyperperception, he could be won over tactfully to the power-complex persuasions of the bureau. And Karen’s principal function was that of a seductress who was to help pervert his sense of values.

  Lanier abruptly shook himself awake and, in the return of awareness to the befuddled mind, Gregson zylphed the great concentration of perceptive power, the advanced faculty of hypersensitivity.

  He reached out for the superintendent, having sensed beforehand that Lanier’s first impulse would be to turn off the rault suppressor and let staff members zylph the wrongness in the cottage.

  But Lanier eluded him, having likewise sensed Gregson’s move. In trying to snatch up the suppressor, however, the superintendent succeeded only in knocking it off the table.

  Somehow, Gregson managed to get an arm around the huge man’s neck from behind.

  But Lanier’s heel came back in a vicious thrust at his groin and as he folded over in pain the superintendent reached for the massive ice bucket. Befuddled as he was by the wine, he staggered and Gregson, seizing the silver bucket first, brought it hard down on the man’s head.

  Then, as the superintendent collapsed, Gregson snatched the rault caster from the table and twisted its dial until the green pilot light went out, depriving Lanier of his superior hypervision.

  As Gregson sifted back through the last rault-limned impressions he had received, he realized he had zylphed the man’s fatal concussion. Even now the other lay lifeless on the carpet.

  Among other impressions he had zylphed during the struggle, were the keys in Lanier’s pocket, one of which would fit the ignition lock on the high-powered car outside the cottage.

  And the car would be his means of reaching VJO Ground Control Headquarters in Paris, where an inordinately boastful Madame Carnot might unwittingly contribute to his knowledge of the Security Bureau conspiracy.

  CHAPTER XII

  Gregson drove cautiously toward the palace exit. On the seat beside him, the cherry glow of his rault suppressor’s pilot bulb assured that his approach would not be detected hyper-visually, at least. As for his chances of being spotted optically—he could see, through the gatehouse window, that the guards were relaxed.

  He coasted until he reached the gate. Then he fed full power to the engine and roared off.

  Within minutes, he was tensely negotiating the sweeping turns of the new highway around Mont-Valerien. Ahead, moonlight washed down on gentle slopes, suffusing the mist-enshrouded, ancient American cemetery near Suresnes with a nebulous glow.

  Soon he began resenting the presence of the rault suppressor, regretting his resultant inability to zylph back in the direction of Versailles and determine whether Larder’s body had been found.

  Relaxing his grip on the wheel, he reviewed the avalanching evidence of the Security Bureau’s conspiracy. First there had been the Versailles Academy’s almost universal preoccupation with power—as so vividly exemplified by the Irish girl Sharon’s bold anticipation of an “elite, ruling group,” supported by a “modern feudal system.” And Karen had verified the bureau’s adherence to the “power” concept, although she had dressed the whole thing up (solely for his benefit?) in euphemistic terms of benevolent, though authoritarian control over all of Earth.

  Then Simmons had been slain because his persuasions conflicted with the bureau’s—because he wasn’t “interested in power.” And, finally, Lanier had dreamed of an imperium whose oligarchy was already parceling out satrapies and designating “supreme authorities.”

  Sufficient evidence to prove the Security Bureau was actually involved in a scheme to maintain permanent control over all Earth? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But if there were such a pattern of conspiracy, Madame Carnot might have all the details.

  Dismissing his concern for the moment at least, Gregson welcomed the opportunity to turn his glial attention on Chandeen, which he could now zylph just around the edge of the Stygum Field. The brilliant hyperradiance filled him with a sense of confidence and…

  He started. How could he be aware of Chandeen? Wasn’t he shielded from its emanations by the rault suppressor?

  Dismayed, he glanced down at the seat. The glow of the instrument’s indicator light was almost out! It was losing power and its projected field of artificial stygumness was collapsing!

  Then he cast about for hyperimpressions and was promptly aware of the Security Bureau car bearing down on him from behind. He depressed the fuel injector and the car lurched forward with a burst of acceleration.

  Of course they had zylphed him! With his suppressor putting out barely enough stygumness to conceal himself, how could they have missed the hypervisual anomaly of part of a car speeding down the highway?

  Then he saw what was happening. With the motion of the vehicle, the instrument’s control knob was robbing against the seat and edging gradually towards zero position. He reached out for the suppressor, but stayed his hand on the knob as new, incomprehensible impressions assailed his glial receptors, compelling his attention.

  It was a moment before he realized he was zylphing frenzied activity high overhead, on the fringe of the atmosphere. And it was yet another moment before he recognized, in hypersensory detail, the Security Bureau Space Division’s shuttle craft that was descending in full free fall and lashing out viciously with its heavy laser weapon.

  Target of the attack was something unidentifiable, completely unfamiliar because he had neither zylphed nor seen anything like it before.

  The object, in the atmosphere now and finally out of range of the space craft, was decelerating from supermach speed while its outer surface was flaking away, molecule by molecule.

  The strange vessel had been slashed by several beams. Inside, structural members were disintegrating (as intended, he sensed) at such a rate that the entire capsule would evaporate shortly after drifting to the ground. And on the impact site, he knew, would be deposited—a Valorian.

  Even from this distance, he could perceive the twin hearts, beating now at an enfeebled pace as a result of a head injury sustained during the attack. And he zylphed that the alien was unconscious.

  Gregson’s car, negotiating a sharp curve, careened toward the ditch and he restored control just in time to avoid a •smashup. He twisted the suppressor’s dial back on. Its pilot bulb blazed anew and at once he could no longer zylph anything at all.

  The car righted itself and he glanced back to see that his pursuers had gained considerably and were in visual contact now. Just then an intense laser beam speared through the darkness, cutting down a tree on his left.

  The concrete ribbon twisted into a series of descending curves, flanked by coppices.

  Around the next bend a side road loomed in the glare of his headlights. He thrust down on the brakes. Screeching almost to a halt, he wrenched the vehicle off the highway and around behind a grove of trees, then he switched off his lights.

  Seconds later the Security Bureau car sped past.

  Guided only by moonglow, he drove on, hopeful that the side road would lead to yet another arterial approach to Paris.

  Then something glistened in the moonlight near the ground on his left and he remembered the descending capsule.

  Aware that the Guardsmen had undoubtedly zylphed the pod and would eventually be attracted to it, he nevertheless stopped the car and started across the field on foot.

  Long ago he had wanted to question a Valorian. But there was the danger that curious special agents would wind up as hypnotized puppets in a conspiratorial cell. Or so the bureau had
said.

  Continuing on towards the capsule’s impact site, he remembered his encounter with the alien in Manhattan. He had been certain, at the time, that being injected by the hypo had stemmed from his own carelessness and his adversary’s superior agility. But Radcliff had blamed it on suggestive compulsion.

  Now he wasn’t so sure. And he intended to find out for himself.

  When he reached the spot where the pod had come to rest, he found only the unconscious alien. He carried the Valorian back to the car, disappointed in the realization that he would have to await a less hazardous opportunity for exploring the man’s unconscious thoughts.

  The man’s? he asked himself suddenly as he placed the Valorian on the back seat.

  Briefly, he turned on the dome light and verified his suspicion. Accentuating his prisoner’s feminine form were a Parisian-style blouse and slacks and intensely dark, straight hair that made her complexion appear less olive by contrast.

  Concerned over how seriously she might be hurt and not knowing what to do with her, he sent the car lunging off in search of another, safer route to Paris.

  * * *

  It was almost two o’clock when he finally solved the maze of secondary roads west of the city, turned into the Route de Madrid and started through the more familiar Bois de Boulogne.

  But what he remembered as a delightful amusement park had been replaced by a huge Screamer isolation institute that reared into the night sky and gleamed in the antiseptic brilliance of its own illumination. Ambulances were converging on the facility along all approaches and it seemed that an inordinate number of persons were going Screamie.

  Leaving the Bois de Boulogne through its Maillot exit, he allowed himself a final, suddenly distrustful glance at the towering building. And he remembered, with alarm now, that the Security Bureau directly supervised all the isolation institutes.

  In effect, the bureau was able to maintain surveillance over almost everybody who went Screamie. Were the institutes actually screening stations—designed to select some of the plague survivors for roles in the conspiracy and to condition others to keep their glial cells perpetually closed?