Ellen must have followed the engagement, but the concentration of his mind had let only the rough details come through to her. She walked beside him now, shivering faintly. Then she caught herself and began trying to help drain the ugliness of the memories from his thoughts.
"And you call yourself weak!" she said.
He grimaced, recognizing that there was some pleasure in his reaction to her words, but also realizing how defenseless the weakness of the other man had been. Yet there was more than that—there had been a moment when he had felt...
He shook the feeling off, wondering about the twisted man. That, he thought bitterly, was a third alternative—to go mad, but to retain both the mutant powers and enough cunning to operate without being recognized as insane. There had been no fight against growing insanity there, but a welcoming of it. No shock had come with the psychoses, but a lust to use himself to revenge his own failures on the world.
If there were even a hundred like him in all the race, then the mutation was a perversion of humanity that deserved to be stamped out. This one was cunning but essentially petty and stupid. A more cleverly evil telepath could probably find ways to seek full vengeance for his fancied wrongs against all mankind. There must be government agencies where a mental spy could find a welcome, and where his slight twists of facts could trigger a rising holocaust.
A difference of language was an obstacle to reading minds, but not a permanent one. Thoughts could be clearly read only in the language the reader knew, but so much of the basic meaning trickled through that gaining fluency in another tongue was a matter of only a few weeks of slight effort. Harry had already begun to pick up a smattering of Spanish before he learned to control his reception of outside thoughts.
They were almost to the apartment building when there was a squeal of brakes ahead of them. Harry looked up to see a car being hastily parked at the curb. He smiled at sight of the worried face of the driver and headed for the car as Ellen went into the building. His smile broadened as the man caught sight of him.
"I took the bus from the meeting," he called out to the surprised investigator. "We got off at Columbus Circle and walked the rest of the way. Put that in your report. You didn't miss anything."
The man from the agency employed by Grimes hesitated, then grinned back at him. "Thanks, Mr. Bronson. Thought I'd lost you back there. Bob Gordon tip you off I was on your tail today?"
Harry nodded, though he no longer needed to be tipped off; he had traced back to the agency and now routinely checked up on the daily assignments each morning. The ability to read minds at greater and greater distances seemed to have grown as steadily as his power to suppress all the unwanted thoughts that reached him. The promise of power suggested by his childhood ability to converse over long distance with his father was nearing full development. He might have enjoyed his increasing ability, except for the constant awareness that there would never be time enough to realize it fully.
Ellen was busy with a shopping list when he entered the apartment, but she had already started the coffee. He waited until it was down, then dropped to a seat beside her, pondering over the incident on the bus. He had a faint awareness of her mind touching his to learn his desires for dinner, but most of it was below his fully conscious level; by now she could trace his appetite better than he could. He watched with a familiar amusement her decision to go out shopping rather than call in her order. Shopping and cooking were her chief relief from the growing tensions of their marriage.
After she was gone, he faced himself more fully than he'd wanted to do while her mind was so close. He'd been scared by the potential for evil in the twisted man. Now he realized the danger that his own mind might represent, if his thoughts were aberrant. He was sure that his mental powers, already far stronger than those of the other, were still growing rapidly. He had been careful in his use of them so far—but would he always control himself? In a few days, when madness struck, would he lose those powers—or would he pervert them into the savagery that lay too close to all mankind's background?
He knew too little about the mutation. Most of the mutants he had identified who were still sane had seemed essentially far more decent than the average of humanity. He had found little dangerous desire for power. Yet there had been Miss Jamieson and the man on the bus. How many others might there be with potential for harm?
There was little communication between him and Ellen through the dinner. He felt her private internal struggles over some horror of her animal self that had been triggered by the contact with the twisted man; he respected her wish for privacy in her thoughts, just as she let him argue out his own questions alone. But it made for a temporary feeling of isolation between them that was strongly unpleasant. He watched with some relief as she finished the dishes and went to lie down. Then he decided to walk over to Gordon's office. The report on the drugs listed in the brochures should be ready for him.
Harry was heading toward Broadway when he first sensed that something was wrong. He hesitated, sending a questioning probe toward Ellen. She was still sleeping, undisturbed, but the feeling of danger did not abate. He turned back, beginning to run as he neared the apartment building. He passed the entrance and darted down a narrow alley to the rear.
The twisted little man was a motionless shadow, huddled on the fire escape below Ellen's bedroom. Then, as he recognized Harry, he sprang up and dropped the mental screen with which he had been trying to conceal his intentions.
His mind was driven by amphetamines into a concentrated blast of rage and vengeance. These two had spied on Ziggy; they were after him. But he had traced their minds, and now they'd pay. First the woman, once he kicked in the window. Ziggy would have her before the man could reach him.
There was no time for a physical rescue. Harry struck out with his thoughts, forcing himself to meet the filth that poured from the septic mind. But this time Ziggy was not caught unaware. His defenses gave slightly, but he was mentally braced, hopped up by his triumph and the drugs that dulled his fear.
Harry threw all the fury of his desperation into an effort to stop the creature. He saw the foot move, and he concentrated every thought against it, holding it...
Then he lay collapsed on the ground, staring upward helplessly, while horror seized him and owned him completely. The Alien Entity of his precognition was inside his head, taking over his mind and shoving him aside. He was cut off from all telepathy, locked away in a corner of his mind, totally helpless!
From the back of the mind that had been his, Harry tried to scream a plea to the presence that had seized him. But the alien horror he had felt briefly was shielded from him now. His possessor had cut itself off from him, as it had cut him off from all contact with other minds. He was aware of only a pressure of ruthless power that was beyond his understanding.
He could no longer control his muscles, but he could still hear and see. His eyes turned without his will and came into focus on Ziggy. And suddenly the veil over Harry's perception was lifted enough for him to read some of the thoughts of the little man, though all other minds remained closed to him.
Ziggy was gloating in anticipation as his leg swung far back for the kick that would smash the window and let him in to find the woman. But the kick was never completed. The foot came down gently beside his other one. With a grace he had never shown before, he turned from the window and began descending the iron steps that led from landing to landing.
The shock of that produced a complete hiatus in Ziggy's thoughts. Then his brain flooded with rage, and he struck out with all his twisted powers.
His effort was wasted. He kept walking gracefully down the steps, and now something was happening in his perverted mind. His telepathic ability began to fade away, as if drained through a hole in his brain. At the end of the first flight, no power remained.
Next his memories began to vanish, beginning with his earliest, moving forward year by year. His childhood was gone, his adolescent years, and the loss moved forward across his warp
ed adult life. He was drooling and cursing now as he moved down the flights of stairs. Yet always, something was left; one part of the mind remained untouched, left to let him know what he was losing.
Mercifully, Harry's awareness of the man's torture had been growing weaker. Only his eyes and ears told him what was happening as Ziggy reached the last landing. The little man dropped from there to the ground with the same strange grace and stood erect, mouthing futile curses. Then his body slumped, and the curses changed to a meaningless, bleating cry. He went stumbling away, his face now slack and empty.
Harry forced the sickness from his mind and drew further into himself, trying to prepare himself for the battle he must wage to regain control. He was shivering from the dampness and cold of the ground, and his shoulder ached from the pressure of some bit of rubble. He tried to sit up—and his body obeyed his wishes.
The Alien Entity was gone; he was again alone in his head!
He moved back into himself, fearing some kind of a trap. His mental landscape felt disturbed, touched with an alienness that was beginning to fade. But there was no sign of any other presence. He felt gently for Ellen's mind. She was sleeping quietly. Somehow, the grisly events had been kept from her.
He wanted desperately to go to her, to seek comfort and to regain his stability. But this was no burden to put upon her. He stood there, fighting it out within himself, until he could control himself to walk back down the alley and away, beyond the reach of her sleeping thoughts.
He found a nearly vacant restaurant on Broadway and went in, taking his coffee to the privacy of the back booth.
There was no pattern he could find. The Alien had taken him without effort when his mind was occupied with Ziggy.
Then, for no reason he could determine, it had simply vanished back into the future from which it had struck.
The future? His thought seized on that, looking for evidence. He could find none, yet he was completely certain that the idea was correct. The thing did not exist in the present. It lay in his future, waiting for him there. And from that future, it could reach back to take him and to use him with a power beyond his own and in ways that left him still quivering with horror inside himself.
Coleman had suggested that precognition was simply telepathy working through time, permitting a man to read his own future thoughts. It should be theoretically possible then for the future mind to reach back to the past. Perhaps some memory worked that way. But reading a mind was not the same as taking total control of it.
For what purpose? Why had the Alien struck—and even more puzzling, why had it simply vanished again? How far in the future did it lie?
Harry could find no answers. Nor could he discover anything more about the nature of the possession. There must be traces left in his mind, but he could not force himself to accept them. His mind was already trying to blank out what memories it had. And maybe putting it all aside was the best thing to do; his faint hope of winning against foreseen insanity could hardly be helped by an endless process of asking questions for which he had no answers.
All he had gained was an uncertain belief that the risk of possession lay beyond the threat of madness. He had to fight against the first before worrying about the second.
He shrugged unhappily and left the restaurant, heading again for Gordon's office.
Kim let him in. "Hello, Harry. Bob's making some coffee. He expected you."
She knew of his abilities, but the knowledge seemed a matter of total unimportance to her. She bustled about, smiling and quiet as always, until she was sure he was comfortable. He could hear Gordon's voice from the main apartment, busy putting the younger boy to bed.
The investigator came in a few minutes later, carrying a tray. He poured for Harry, then took a cup for himself, black and heavy on the sugar. "The one thing Kim can't do is make good coffee," he said automatically. "You look at the summary I wrote up? It's no dice, Harry."
Harry had already glanced over the report on the one drug that had seemed slightly promising, offering a hope of controlling some forms of schizophrenia without too much sedation as a side effect. Gordon's notes on it indicated that it might be effective in controlling Ménière's syndrome—whatever that was—and preventing travel sickness, but that it had failed all further tests. Either the first report had been biased or incompetent, and it was no better than most other tranquilizers in dealing with psychoses.
"How'd you get the current reports on it?" Harry asked. He had accepted so many failures already that one more hardly touched him.
"Their head biochemist is a militant. When I let him know how I'd been shot by a white punk, he adopted me as a soul brother. That report was just in; they haven't had time yet to retract their first release." Gordon hesitated, then sighed softly. "Harry, how much longer do you think you'll need me? I've got... Oh, hell, take a look and see for yourself."
It was obvious that Gordon meant to stick to the bitter end if it would help in any way. But he could see little left for him to do. And now the Acme people wanted Gordon on a long-term industrial job. It was a good deal for him. Yet he was almost hoping that Harry might find an excuse to keep him on and to hell with security. There was a feeling that had grown imperceptibly between the two men without any need for discussion.
"Better sign on with Acme," Harry told him. He found Gordon's last statement among the papers on the desk and glanced at the figure. There were a fair number of items missing from it, such as the times after hours here, but he'd expected that. He made out the check for the amount of the bill without comment and watched Gordon toss it into the drawer.
"Kim always knows how to find me," Gordon said. "Any time, Harry."
"I'll keep in touch—if I can," Harry promised. The investigator nodded soberly, keeping his hand on the door knob. "Do that."
Harry headed across the dark street, feeling the future narrow down ahead of him. A man should feel the present add to his past, but each bit of present now seemed to strip something from him. Even precognition refused to come now, as if there was nothing ahead to induce memories back to him—or nothing his mind would accept.
Then he remembered one earlier bit of precognition that had not yet been fulfilled. It seemed a good time to take care of it; he was in no mood to return to Ellen yet. He grunted and turned back toward an avenue where he could find a cab heading downtown. The event he was now heading toward was one he had once tried to reject. But its horror had diminished in comparison to other things, and he could now find no other alternative. He no longer could be sure that his future self had any better reason for the decision than he had, but since nothing seemed to offer a better answer, he was past letting such things bother him. Anyhow, if precognition worked, he was committed to the action, and it made more sense to be ready for it than to have to depend on hasty expedients later.
The skill of the experts had proved to be only the clumsy art of men stumbling through darkness. The drugs of the accepted pharmacopoeia were useless to him. Perhaps he might be forced to try the experiments of fools and the palliative of hopeless escape.
Dave and Tina Hillery were delighted to see him, once he assured them that he hadn't mistaken this for a meeting night of the Primates. For half an hour, he relaxed and almost recovered his old attitudes. Then Tina's gossip began to bore him, and he discovered that one bottle of Dave's bargain beer was enough. Dave's latest book was doing well, surprisingly, but the man's self-chosen poverty could not be broken by anything as simple as money.
Dave listened in openmouthed surprise as Harry broached the real reason for his visit. Then his face hardened. "Not a chance. I'm not prissy—you know that, Harry. But the stuff is no damned good. It's a weakling's copout on a world he hasn't got guts enough to enjoy for itself. It's god in a powder; only the god turns up later with horns and tail."
"Okay," Harry said quietly. "I guess I can get it through Galloway. His last couple of articles were on the private drug scene."
"Galloway! He got all that from
me, and he got it wrong. He wouldn't know a male leaf from a female, nor pot from hash. You'd pay through the nose for dope you got through him. And you'd wind up with real trouble. Right now, there's more stuff cut with strychnine than you'd believe."
"So I'll have to take my chances." He felt the resistance begin to melt and turned to Tina. "I'm sorry to bother you people, but I always heard Dave could make contacts better than anyone else."
Dave refused to be baited. He had no need to prove himself, since it was generally recognized that he knew more of what had once been the Village than any other man living there. But Tina gradually swung to Harry's side. At last, Dave gave in. He took the money reluctantly, whistling in amazement at the amount Harry wanted.
"You can't use all that, Harry. What's up? You getting this for one of Fred Emmett's crazy parties? I heard his group was turning on since Nora Bley moved in with him. You're not hanging around that pack of dogs, are you?"
Harry shrugged. "Does it matter? But I'm not seeing Nora, if you must know. I'm still satisfied with married life."
"Okay, it's your business, Harry." Dave considered carefully, glancing at a note-jammed calendar on the telephone table. "Hash, seeds, mescaline, LSD—I can get all of it. But the good stuff is a little short right now, I hear. A lot of it is pure poison; a kid last week ruptured his appendix in convulsions and was too blotto to realize it. Even the pure quill is risky enough; some people get bad trips on anything. Umm, well, if you insist—give me through day after tomorrow and I'll probably have everything."
Tina expected Harry to stay for more socializing, but he was saved from further gossip and beer by the arrival of two other Primates, who wanted to start a literary bull session with Dave. He let Dave lend him a book on drugs, full of warnings and facts, but also giving detailed instructions. Then he managed to break away.
Ellen was asleep when he reached the apartment. Her mind was troubled with vague feelings of some ugliness, but it was not concerned with Ziggy or with anything she sensed from Harry. He broadcast a generalized feeling of warmth and affection toward her and felt her respond by drifting into more comfortable sleep. He closed the hall door and began making the inevitable pot of coffee, glancing through Dave's book while he waited. The warnings only confirmed his feelings against the so-called psychedelics, but he put aside his repugnance and carefully memorized the details of their use. Then he slipped the book into an inconspicuous spot among some technical manuals and turned to his coffee.
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