The Randall Garrett Megapack Page 10

  * * * *

  He sat down in his chair again and forced himself to relax, smoke a cigarette, and read the paper—the sports section. Perusing the records of the season’s cricket matches kept his mind off that picture on the front page. At least, he hoped they would. Let’s see, now—Benton was being rated as the finest googly bowler on the Staffordshire Club…

  Everything went fine until he came across a reference to a John Harris, a top-flight batsman for Hambledon; that reminded him of Robert Harris. Houston threw down the paper in disgust and walked over to the phone.

  The number was TROwbridge 5-4321, but no one ever bothered to remember it. Simply dial 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, and every time a voice at the other end would answer—

  “Hamilton speaking.”

  “Houston here; will I be needed in the next hour or so?”

  “Mmmm. Just a second; I’ll check the roster. No; your evidence won’t be needed personally. You’ve filed an affidavit. No, I don’t think—wait a minute! Yes, there’s a return here for you; reservation on the six A.M. jet to New York. Your job here is done, Houston, so you can take the rest of the evening off and relax. Going anywhere in particular?”

  “I thought I’d get a bite to eat and take in a movie, maybe, but if I’m due out at six, I’ll forego the cinematic diversion. When’s the trial?”

  “It’s scheduled for eleven-thirty this evening. Going to come?”

  Houston shook his head. “Not if I’m not needed to give evidence. Those Controllers always give me the creeps.”

  “They do everybody,” said Hamilton. “Well, you caught him; there’s no need for you to stick around for the windup. Have a good time.”

  “Thanks,” said Houston shortly, and hung up.

  The windup, Houston thought. Sure. That’s all it will be. A Controller’s trial is a farce. Knock him out with a stun gun and then pump him full of comatol. How can he defend himself if he’s unconscious all through the trial?

  Houston knew what the average man’s answer to that would be: “If a Controller were allowed to remain conscious, he’d take over the judge’s mind and get himself freed.”

  Houston said an obscene word under his breath, jammed his hat on his head, put on his coat, and left his apartment.

  * * * *

  With the coming of darkness, the heavy fog had become still denser. The yellow beams of the sodium vapor lamps were simply golden spots hanging in an all-enveloping blackness. Walking the street was a process of moving from one little golden island of light to another, crossing seas of blankness between. The monochromatic yellow shone on the human faces that passed beneath the lamps, robbing them of all color, giving them a dead, grayish appearance beneath the yellow itself.

  David Houston walked purposefully along the pavement, his hand jammed deep in his overcoat pockets. One hand held the control box for the little earpiece he wore. He kept moving the band selector, listening for any sign that the Psychodeviant Police were suspicious of a Controller in their midst.

  If they were following him, of course, they would use a different scrambler circuit than the one which was plugged into his own unit, but he would be able to hear the gabble of voices, even if he couldn’t understand what they were saying.

  So far, there hadn’t been a sound; if he was being followed, his tailers weren’t using the personal intercom units.

  He didn’t try to elude anyone who might be following. That, in itself, would be a giveaway. Let them watch, if they were watching. They wouldn’t see anything but a man going to get himself a bit of dinner.

  The Charles II Inn, on Regent Street, near Piccadilly Circus, was a haven of brightness in an otherwise Stygian London. It was one of those “old-fashioned” places—Restoration style of decoration, carried out in modern plastics. The oak paneling looked authentic enough, but it was just a little too glossy to be real.

  Houston pushed open the door, stepped inside, removed his hat and coat and shook the dampness from them. As he handed them to the checker, he looked casually around. Dorrine was nowhere in sight, but he hadn’t expected her to be. There would be no point in their meeting physically; it might even be downright dangerous.

  The headwaiter, clad in the long waistcoat and full trunk-hose of the late Seventeenth Century, bowed punctiliously.

  “You’re alone, sir?”

  “Alone, yes,” Houston said. “I’ll just be wanting a light supper and a drink or two.”

  “This way, sir.”

  Houston followed the man to a small table in the rear of the huge dining room. It was set for two, but the other place was quickly cleared away. Houston ordered an Irish-and-soda from a waiter who was only slightly less elaborately dressed than the headwaiter, and then settled himself down to wait. If he knew Dorrine, she would be on time to the minute.

  She came while the waiter was setting the drink on Houston’s table. She stepped in through the door, her unmistakable hair glowing a rich red in the illumination of the pseudo-candlelight.

  She didn’t bother to look around; she knew he would be there.

  After a single glance, Houston averted his eyes from her and looked back at his drink.

  And in that same instant, their minds touched.

  Dave, darling! I knew you’d be early!

  Dorrine!

  And then their minds meshed for an instant.

  I—(we)—you—LOVE—you—(each other)—me!—us!

  Houston looked complacently at his drink while the headwaiter led Dorrine to a table on the far side of the room. She sat down gracefully, smiled at the waiter, and ordered a cocktail. Then she took a magazine from her handbag and began—presumably—to read.

  Her thought came: Who is this Richard Harris? He’s not one of our Group.

  Houston sipped at his drink. No. An unknown, like the others. I wonder if he’s even a telepath.

  What? Her thought carried astonishment. Why, Dave—he’d have to be! How else could he have controlled this Sir Lewis—whatsisname—Huntley?

  Well—I’ve got a funny idea, Houston replied. Look at it this way: So far as we know, there are two Groups of telepaths. There’s our own Group. All we want is to be left alone. We don’t read a Normal’s mind unless we have to, and we don’t try to control one unless our lives are threatened. We stay under cover, out of everyone’s way.

  Then there are the megalomaniacs. They try, presumably, to gain wealth and power by controlling Normals. And they get caught with monotonous regularity. Right?

  The girl caught an odd note in that thought. What do you mean, “monotonous regularity”? she asked.

  I mean, Houston thought savagely, why is it they’re all so bloody stupid? Look at this Harris guy; he is supposed to have taken over Sir Lewis’s mind in order to get a thousand pounds. So what did he have Sir Lewis do? Parade all around the city to pick up a PD Police net, and then give his address to a cabman in a loud voice and lead the whole net right to Harris! How stupid can a man get?

  It does look pretty silly, Dorrine agreed. Have you got an explanation?

  Several, Houston told her. And I don’t know which one is correct.

  Let’s have them, the girl thought.

  Houston gave them to her. None of them, he knew, was completely satisfactory, but they all made more sense that the theory that Harris had done what the PD Police claimed he’d done.

  Theory Number One: The real megalomaniac Controller had taken over Sir Lewis’s mind and made him draw out the thousand pounds and head west on Leadenhall Street. Somehow, the Controller had found out that Sir Lewis was being followed, and had steered him away from the original destination, heading him toward the innocent Robert Harris. That implied that the Controller had been within a few dozen yards of the net men that afternoon. A Controller can’t control a mind directly from a distance, although orders can be implanted which will cause a man to carry out a plan of action, even though he may be miles from the Controller. But in order to change those plans, the Controller would have to be within
projection range.

  Theory Two: Robert Harris actually was a megalomaniac Controller; with a long record of success behind him, who had finally grown careless.

  At that point, Dorrine interjected a thought: Isn’t it possible that he wanted to be caught?

  Houston mulled it over for a minute. A guilt-punishment reaction? He wanted to be punished for his crimes? I suppose that might account for part of it, yes. But if he’d been so successful, what did he do with all his money?

  Dorrine gave a mental shrug. Who knows? What’s Theory Number Three?

  Number Three was the screwiest one of all, yet it made a weird kind of sense. Suppose that Sir Lewis himself had had a grudge against Harris? The whole thing would have been ridiculously easy; all he’d have to do would be to act just as he had acted and then give evidence against Harris.

  The thing that made it odd wasn’t the actual frame-up (if that’s what it was); these days, every crime was blamed on a Controller. A man accused of murder simply looked virtuous and said that he would never have done such a thing if he hadn’t been under the power of a Controller. Ditto for robbery, rape, and any other felony you’d care to name.

  An aura of fear hung over the whole Earth; each man half suspected everyone with whom he came in contact of being a Controller.

  So it wasn’t that the frame-up in itself was peculiar in this case; it was simply that it wasn’t Sir Lewis Huntley’s style. If Sir Lewis had wanted to get Harris, he’d have done it legally, without any underhanded frame-ups. Still, the theory remained as a possibility.

  I suppose it does, Dorrine agreed, but how does that tie in with our own Group? What about Jackson and Marcy? What happened to them?

  I don’t know, Houston admitted, I just don’t know.

  Jackson and Marcy had been members of the Group of telepaths who had banded together for companionship and mutual protection. Both of them had been trapped by the PD Police in exactly the same way that Harris had been trapped. They were now where Harris would be in a matter of hours—in the Penal Cluster.

  Their arrests didn’t make sense, either; they had been accused of taking over someone’s mind for the purpose of gaining money illegally—illegal, that is, according to the new UN laws that had been passed to supersede the various national laws that had previously been in effect.

  But Houston had known both men well, and neither of them was the kind of man who would pull such a stunt, much less do it in such a stupid manner.

  Dorrine thought: Well, Dave, this Harris case is out of our hands now; we’ve got to concentrate on getting others into the Group—we’ve got to find the other sane ones.

  You’re ready to take over here, then? he asked.

  At the table, several yards away from where Houston was sitting, Dorrine, still looking at the book, smiled faintly.

  I’ll have to; you’re being transferred back to New York at six in the morning.

  Houston allowed a feeling of startled surprise to bridge the gap between their minds. How’d you know that? He hadn’t told her, and she couldn’t have forced the knowledge from his mind. A telepath can open the mind of a Normal as simply as he might open the pages of a book, but the mind of another Controller is far stronger. One telepath couldn’t force anything from the mind of another; all thoughts had to be exchanged voluntarily.

  She was still smiling. We’ve got a few spies in the UN now, she told him. I got the information before you did.

  You knew before you left New York? he asked incredulously.

  That’s right, she thought. The decision was made last night. Why?

  Nothing, he told her. I was just surprised, that’s all. But deep behind the telepathic barrier he had erected against her probing mind, he was thinking something else. He had been assigned to London to capture the Controller—then unknown—who was said to be active in England. But his recall order had been decided upon before Harris was caught—or even suspected. Someone in the UN Psychodeviant Police Supreme Headquarters in New York must have known that Harris would be caught that day!

  Something’s bothering you, Dorrine stated flatly.

  I was thinking about leaving London, he replied evasively. I haven’t seen you for six months, and now I have to leave again.

  I’ll be back in New York within three weeks, the girl thought warmly. I’ll be—

  Her thoughts were cut off suddenly by a strident voice in Houston’s ear. “Attention; all-band notice. Robert Bentley Harris, arraigned this evening on a charge of illegal use of psychodeviant powers for the purpose of compounding a felony, has been found guilty as charged. He was therefore sentenced by the Lord Justice of Her Majesty’s Court of Star Chamber to be banished from Earth forever, such banishment to be carried out by the United Nations Penology Service at the Queen’s pleasure.”

  The words that were running through Houston’s brain, had been transmitted easily to Dorrine. For a moment, neither of them made any comment. Then Houston glanced at his watch.

  Twenty-one minutes, he thought bitterly. What took them so long?

  * * * *

  High in the thin ionosphere, seventy miles above the surface of the Earth, a fifteen-hundred-mile-an-hour rocket airliner winged its way westward across the Atlantic, pushing herself forward on the thin, whispering, white-hot jets of her atomic engine. Behind her, the outdistanced sun sank slowly below the eastern horizon.

  David Houston wasn’t watching the sunrise-in-reverse; he was sitting quietly in his seat, still trying to puzzle out his queer recall to New York. When Hamilton had told him about it over the phone, he’d assumed that New York, having been notified that Harris had been captured, had decided to send for Houston, now that his job was over.

  But now he knew that the order had come through nearly twenty-four hours before Harris was captured.

  Did someone at UN Headquarters know that Harris was going to be captured? Or did someone there suspect that there was something odd about Police Operative David Houston?

  Or both?

  Whatever it was, Houston would have to take his chances; to act suspiciously would be a deadly mistake.

  A stewardess, clad in the chic BOAC uniform, moved down the aisle, quietly informing the passengers that they could have coffee served at their seats or take breakfast in the lounge. The atmosphere of the plane’s interior was filled with the low murmur of a hundred conversations against the background of the susurrant mutter of the mighty engines.

  Uhhh—uh—uh—dizzy—head hurts—uh—uh—

  The sounds in the plane altered subtly as the faint thought insinuated itself on every brain inside the aircraft. None of the Normal passengers recognized it for what it was; it was too gentle, too weak, to be recognized directly by their minds.

  But David Houston recognized it instantly for what it was.

  Somewhere on the plane, a Controller had been unconscious. Had been. For now, his powerful mind was trying to swim up from the black depths of nothingness.

  Uh—uhhhh—uhh—

  The Normal passengers became uneasy, not knowing why they were disturbed. To them, it was like a vaguely unpleasant but totally unrecognizable nudge from their own subconscious, like some long-forgotten and deeply buried memory that had been forced down into oblivion and was now trying to obtrude itself on the conscious mind.

  Uhhh—Oooohh—where?—what happened?—

  A fully conscious telepath could project his thoughts along a narrow locus, focusing them on a single brain, leaving all other brains oblivious to his thoughts. Like a TV broadcasting station, he could choose his wavelength and stick to it.

  But a half-conscious Controller sprayed his thoughts at random, creating mental disturbances in his vicinity. Like a thunderstorm creating radio static, there was no selectivity.

  Savagely, David Houston did what he had to do. It might be a trap, but he had to avoid the carnage that might follow if this went on. He hurled a beam of thought, hard-held, at the offending mind of the awakening telepath.

  DON’
T THINK! RELAX!

  Normally it was impossible for a Controller to take over the mind of another Controller, but these were abnormal circumstances; the half-conscious man, whoever he was, was weakened mentally by some kind of enforced unconsciousness—either a drug or a stun gun. Houston took over his mind smoothly and easily.

  Robert Harris!

  Houston recognized the mind as soon as he held it.

  He didn’t try to force anything on Harris’s mind; he simply held it, cradling it, helping Harris to regain consciousness easily, bringing him up from the darkness gently.

  In normal sleep, everyone’s mind retains a certain amount of self-control and awareness of environment. If it didn’t, noise and bright lights wouldn’t awaken a sleeping person.

  * * * *

  In normal sleep, a telepath retained enough control to keep his thoughts to himself, even when waking up.

  But total anesthesia brought on a mental blackout from which the victim recovered only with effort. And during that time, a Controller’s mind was violently disturbing to the Normal minds around him, who mistook his disordered thoughts for their own.

  Like pouring heavy oil on choppy waters, Houston soothed the disturbances of Harris’s mind, focusing the random broadcasts on his own brain.

  And while he did that, he probed gently into the weakened mind of the prisoner for information.

  Harris was a Controller, all right; there was no doubt about that. But nowhere in his mind was there any trace of any knowledge of what had happened to Sir Lewis Huntley. If Sir Lewis had actually been controlled, it hadn’t been done by Robert Harris.

  Houston wished he’d been able to probe Sir Lewis’s mind; he’d have been able to get a lot more information out of it than he had in his possession now. But that would have been dangerous; if Sir Lewis was a Controller himself, and had been acting a part, Houston would have given himself away the instant he attempted to touch the baronet’s mind. If, on the other hand, Sir Lewis had actually been under the control of another telepath, any probing into the mind of the puppet would have betrayed Houston to the real Controller.

  Harris knew nothing. He wasn’t acquainted with any other Controllers, and had kept his nose clean ever since he’d discovered his latent powers. He knew that megalomaniac Controllers were either captured or mobbed, and he had no wish to experience either.