Brain Twister
Page 21
She stopped suddenly, turnedand said: "Sir Kenneth, give me your weapon."
Malone hesitated for a long, long second. But Burris' eye was on him,and he could interpret the look without much trouble. There was onlyone thing for him to do. He pulled out his .44, ejected the cartridgesin his palm (and reminded himself to reload the gun as soon as he gotit back), and handed the weapon to the Queen, butt foremost.
She took the butt of the revolver in her right hand, leaned out thewindow of the car, and said in a fine, distinct voice: "Kneel,Andrew."
Malone watched with wide, astonished eyes as Andrew J. Burris,Director of the FBI, went to one knee in a low and solemngenuflection. Queen Elizabeth Thompson nodded her satisfaction.
She tapped Burris gently on each shoulder with the muzzle of the gun."I knight thee Sir Andrew," she said. She cleared her throat. "My,this desert air is dry.... Rise, Sir Andrew, and know that you arehenceforth Knight Commander of the Queen's Own FBI."
"Thank you, Your Majesty," Burris said humbly.
He rose to his feet silently. The Queen withdrew into the car againand handed the gun back to Malone. He thumbed the cartridges into thechambers of the cylinder and listened dumbly.
"Your Majesty," Burris said, "this is Dr. Harry Gamble, the head ofProject Isle. Dr. Gamble, this is Her Majesty the Queen; Lady BarbaraWilson, her--uh--her lady-in-waiting; Sir Kenneth Malone; and King--Imean Sir Thomas Boyd." He gave the four a single bright impartialsmile. Then he tore his eyes away from the others, and bent his gazeon Sir Kenneth Malone. "Come over here a minute, Malone," he said,jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "I want to talk to you."
Malone climbed out of the car and went around to meet Burris. He feltjust a little worried as he followed the Director away from the car.True, he had sent Burris a long telegram the night before, in code.But he hadn't expected the man to show up in Yucca Flats. There didn'tseem to be any reason for it.
And when there isn't any reason, Malone told himself sagely, it's abad one.
"What's the trouble, Chief?" he asked.
Burris sighed. "None so far," he said quietly. "I got a report fromthe Nevada State Patrol, and ran it through R&I. They identified themen you killed, all right--but it didn't do us any good. They're hiredhoods."
"Who hired them?" Malone said.
Burris shrugged. "Somebody with money," he said. "Hell, men like thatwould kill their own grandmothers if the price were right--you knowthat. We can't trace them back any farther."
Malone nodded. That was, he had to admit, bad news. But then, when hadhe last had any good news?
"We're nowhere near our telepathic spy," Burris said. "We haven't comeany closer than we were when we started. Have you got anything?Anything at all, no matter how small?"
"Not that I know of, sir," Malone said.
"What about the little old lady--what's her name? Thompson. Anythingfrom her?"
Malone hesitated. "She has a close fix on the spy, sir," he saidslowly, "but she doesn't seem able to identify him right away."
"What else does she want?" Burris said. "We've made her Queen andgiven her a full retinue in costume; we've let her play roulette andpoker with Government money. Does she want to hold a mass execution?If she does, I can supply some Congressmen, Malone. I'm sure it couldbe arranged." He looked at the agent narrowly. "I might even be ableto supply an FBI man or two," he added.
Malone swallowed hard. "I'm trying the best I can, sir," he said."What about the others?"
Burris looked even unhappier than usual. "Come along," he said. "I'llshow you."
When they got back to the car, Dr. Gamble was talking spiritedly withHer Majesty about Roger Bacon. "Before my time, of course," the Queenwas saying, "but I'm sure he was a most interesting man. Now when dearold Marlowe wrote his _Faust_, he and I had several long discussionsabout such matters. Alchemy, Doctor--"
Burris interrupted with: "I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but we mustget on. Perhaps you'll be able to continue your--ah--audience later."He turned to Boyd. "Sir Thomas," he said with an effort, "drivedirectly to the Westinghouse buildings. Over that way." He pointed."Dr. Gamble will ride with you, and the rest of us will follow in thesecond car. Let's move."
He stepped back as the project head got into the car, and watched itroar off. Then he and Malone went to the second car, another FBILincoln. Two agents were sitting in the back seat, with a still figurebetween them.
With a shock, Malone recognized William Logan and the agents he'ddetailed to watch the telepath. Logan's face did not seem to havechanged expression since Malone had seen it last, and he wonderedwildly if perhaps it had to be dusted once a week.
He got in behind the wheel and Burris slid in next to him.
"Westinghouse," Burris said. "And let's get there in a hurry."
"Right," Malone said, and started the car.
"We just haven't had a single lead," Burris said. "I was hoping you'dcome up with something. Your telegram detailed the fight, of course,and the rest of what's been happening--but I hoped there'd besomething more."
"There isn't," Malone was forced to admit. "All we can do is try topersuade Her Majesty to tell us--"
"Oh, I know it isn't easy," Burris said. "But it seems to me...."
By the time they'd arrived at the administrative offices ofWestinghouse's psionics research area, Malone found himself wishingthat something would happen. Possibly, he thought, lightning mightstrike, or an earthquake swallow everything up. He was, suddenly,profoundly tired of the entire affair.
8
Four days later, he was more than tired. He was exhausted. The sixpsychopaths--including Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I--had been housedin a converted dormitory in the Westinghouse area, together with fourhighly nervous and even more highly trained and investigatedpsychiatrists from St. Elizabeths in Washington. The Convention ofNuts, as Malone called it privately, was in full swing.
And it was every bit as strange as he'd thought it was going to be.Unfortunately, five of the six (Her Majesty being the only exception)were completely out of contact with the world. The psychiatristsreferred to them in worried tones as "unavailable for therapy," andspent most of their time brooding over possible ways of bringing themback into the real world for a while, at least far enough so that theycould be spoken with.
Malone stayed away from the five who were completely psychotic. Theweird babblings of fifty-year-old Barry Miles disconcerted him. Theysounded like little Charlie O'Neill's strange semi-connected jabber,but Westinghouse's Dr. O'Connor said that it seemed to representanother phenomenon entirely. William Logan's blank face was a memoryof horror, but the constant tinkling giggles of Ardith Parker, thestudied and concentrated way that Gordon Macklin wove meaninglesspatterns in the air with his waving fingers, and the rhythmless,melodyless humming that seemed to be all there was to the personalityof Robert Cassiday were simply too much for Malone. Taken singly, eachwas frightening and remote; all together, they wove a picture ofinsanity that chilled him more than he wanted to admit.
When the seventh telepath was flown in from Honolulu, Malone didn'teven bother to see her. He let the psychiatrists take over directly,and simply avoided their sessions.
Queen Elizabeth I, on the other hand, he found genuinely likeable.
According to the psych boys, she had been (as both Malone and HerMajesty had theorized) heavily frustrated by being the possessor of atalent which no one else recognized. Beyond that, the impact of otherminds was disturbing; there was a slight loss of identity which seemedto be a major factor in every case of telepathic insanity. But theQueen had compensated for her frustrations in the easiest possibleway; she had simply traded her identity for another one, and hadrationalized a single, overruling delusion: that she was QueenElizabeth I of England, still alive and wrongfully deprived of herthrone.
"It's a beautiful rationalization," one of the psychiatrists said withmore than a trace of admiration in his voice. "Complete and thoroughlyconsistent. She's just traded identities--and
everything else shedoes--_everything_ else--stems logically out of her delusionalpremise. Beautiful."
She may have been crazy, Malone realized. But she was a long way fromstupid.
The project was in full swing. The only trouble was that they were nonearer finding the telepath than they had been three weeks before.With five completely blank human beings to work with, and the sixthQueen Elizabeth (Malone heard privately that the last telepath, thegirl from Honolulu, was no better than the first five; she hadapparently regressed into what one