Brain Twister

by Randall Garrett

of the psychiatrists called a "non-identity childhood syndrome." Malone didn't know what it meant, but itsounded terrible.)--with that crew, Malone could see why progress wastheir most difficult commodity.

  Dr. Harry Gamble, the head of Project Isle, was losing poundage by thehour with worry. And, Malone reflected, he could ill afford it.

  Burris, Malone and Boyd had set themselves up in a temporary officewithin the Westinghouse area. The Director had left his assistant incharge in Washington. Nothing, he said over and over again, was asimportant as the spy in Project Isle.

  Apparently Boyd had come to believe that, too. At any rate, though hewas still truculent, there were no more outbursts of rebellion.

  But, on the fourth day:

  "What do we do now?" Burris asked.

  "Shoot ourselves," Boyd said promptly.

  "Now, look here--" Malone began, but he was overruled.

  "Boyd," Burris said levelly, "if I hear any more of that sort ofpessimism, you're going to be an exception to the beard rule. One morecrack out of you, and you can go out and buy yourself a razor."

  Boyd put his hand over his chin protectively, and said nothing at all.

  "Wait a minute," Malone said. "Aren't there any _sane_ telepaths inthe world?"

  "We can't find any," Burris said. "We--"

  There was a knock at the office door. "Who's there?" Burris called."Dr. Gamble," said the man's surprisingly baritone voice.

  Burris called: "Come in, Doctor," and the door opened. Dr. Gamble'slean face looked almost haggard.

  "Mr. Burris," he said, extending his arms a trifle, "can't anything bedone?" Malone had seen Gamble speaking before, and had wondered if itwould be possible for the man to talk with his hands tied behind hisback. Apparently it wouldn't be. "We feel that we are approaching acritical stage in Project Isle," the scientist said, enclosing onefist within the other hand. "If anything more gets out to the Soviets,we might as well publish our findings--" a wide, outflung gesture ofboth arms--"in the newspapers."

  Burris stepped back. "We're doing the best we can, Dr. Gamble," hesaid. All things considered, his obvious try at radiating confidencewas nearly successful. "After all," he went on, "we know a great dealmore than we did four days ago. Miss Thompson has assured us that thespy is right here, within the compound of Yucca Flats Labs. We'vebottled everything up in this compound, and I'm confident that noinformation is at present getting through to the Soviet Government.Miss Thompson agrees with me."

  "Miss Thompson?" Gamble said, one hand at his bearded chin.

  "The Queen," Burris said.

  Gamble nodded and two fingers touched his forehead. "Ah," he said. "Ofcourse." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "But we can't keepeverybody who's here now locked up forever. Sooner or later we'll haveto let them--" His left hand described the gesture of a man tossingaway a wad of paper--"go." His hands fell to his sides. "We're lost,unless we can find that spy."

  "We'll find him," Burris said with a show of great confidence.

  "But--"

  "Give her time," Burris said. "Give her time. Remember her mentalcondition."

  Boyd looked up. "Rome," he said in an absent fashion, "wasn't built ina daze."

  Burris glared at him, but said nothing. Malone filled theconversational hole with what he thought would be nice, and hopeful,and untrue.

  "We know he's someone on the reservation, so we'll catch himeventually," he said. "And as long as his information isn't gettinginto Soviet hands, we're safe." He glanced at his wristwatch.

  Dr. Gamble said: "But--"

  "My, my," Malone said. "Almost lunchtime. I have to go over and havelunch with Her Majesty. Maybe she's dug up something more."

  "I hope so," Dr. Gamble said, apparently successfully deflected. "I dohope so."

  "Well," Malone said, "pardon me." He shucked off his coat andtrousers. Then he proceeded to put on the doublet and hose that hungin the little office closet. He shrugged into the fur-trimmed, slash-sleeved coat, adjusted the plumed hat to his satisfaction with greatcare, and gave Burris and the others a small bow. "I go to an audiencewith Her Majesty, gentlemen," he said in a grave, well-modulatedvoice. "I shall return anon."

  He went out the door and closed it carefully behind him. When he hadgone a few steps he allowed himself the luxury of a deep sigh.

  Then he went outside and across the dusty street to the barracks whereHer Majesty and the other telepaths were housed. No one paid anyattention to him, and he rather missed the stares he'd become used todrawing. But by now, everybody was used to seeing Elizabethanclothing. Her Majesty had arrived at a new plateau.

  She would now allow no one to have audience with her unless he wasproperly dressed. Even the psychiatrists--whom she had, with a carefulsense of meiosis, appointed Physicians to the Royal House--had to wearthe stuff.

  Malone went over the whole case in his mind--for about the thousandthtime, he told himself bitterly.

  Who could the telepathic spy be? It was like looking for a needle in arolling stone, he thought. Or something. He did remember clearly thata stitch in time saved nine, but he didn't know nine what, andsuspected it had nothing to do with his present problem.

  How about Dr. Harry Gamble, Malone thought. It seemed a littleunlikely that the head of Project Isle would be spying on his ownmen--particularly since he already had all the information. But, onthe other hand, he was just as probable a spy as anybody else.

  Malone moved onward. Dr. Thomas O'Connor, the Westinghouse psionicsman, was the next nominee. Before Malone had actually found HerMajesty, he had had a suspicion that O'Connor had cooked the wholething up to throw the FBI off the trail and confuse everybody, andthat he'd intended merely to have the FBI chase ghosts while the realspy did his work undetected.

  But what if O'Connor were the spy himself--a telepath? What if he wereso confident of his ability to throw the Queen off the track that hehad allowed the FBI to find all the other telepaths? There was anotherargument for that: he'd had to report the findings of his machine nomatter what it cost him; there were too many other men on his staffwho knew about it.

  O'Connor was a perfectly plausible spy, too. But he didn't seem verylikely. The head of a government project is likely to be a much-investigated man. Could any tie-up with Russia--even a psionic one--stand up against that kind of investigation? It was possible.Anything, after all, was possible. You eliminated the impossible, andthen whatever remained, however improbable....

  Malone told himself morosely to shut up and think.

  O'Connor, he told himself, might be the spy. It would be a pleasure,he realized, to go to the office of that superior scientist and arresthim. "I know your true name," he muttered. "It isn't O'Connor, it'sMoriarty." He wondered if the Westinghouse man had ever done any workon the dynamics of an asteroid. Then he wondered what the dynamics ofan asteroid were.

  But if O'Connor were the spy, nothing made sense. Why would he havedisclosed the fact that people were having their minds read in thefirst place?

  Sadly, Malone gave up the idea. But, then, there were other ideas. Theother psychiatrists, for instance....

  The only trouble with them, Malone realized, was that there seemed tobe neither motive nor anything else to connect them to the case. Therewas no evidence, none in any direction.

  Why, there was just as much evidence that the spy was really KennethJ. Malone, he told himself.

  And then he stopped.

  Maybe Tom Boyd had been thinking that way about him. Maybe Boydsuspected that he, Malone, was really the spy.

  Certainly it worked in reverse. Boyd...

  No, Malone told himself firmly. That was silly.

  If he were going to consider Boyd, he realized, he might as well gowhole hog and think about Andrew J. Burris.

  And that really _was_ ridiculous. Absolutely ridic....

  Well, Queen Elizabeth had seemed pretty certain when she'd pointed himout in Dr. Dowson's office. And the fact that she'd apparently changedher mind didn't have to mean very much. After a
ll, how much faithcould you place in Her Majesty at the best of times? If she'd made amistake about Burris in the first place, she could just as well havemade a mistake in the second place. Or about the spy's being at YuccaFlats at all.

  In which case, Malone thought sadly, they were right back where they'dstarted from.

  Behind their own goal line.

  One way or another, though, Her Majesty had made a mistake. She'dpointed Burris out as the spy, and then she'd said she'd been wrong.Either Burris was a spy, or else he wasn't. You couldn't have it