Brain Twister Read online

withinterest. They shut the door carefully behind them and stood beforehim.

  "Now, then," one of them said. "We're going to take the jacket off, ifyou promise to be a good boy."

  "Sure," Malone said. "And when you take my clothing, look in thepockets."

  "The pockets?"

  "To find my FBI identification," Malone said wearily. He only half-believed the idea himself, but half a belief, he told himselfconfusedly, was better than no mind at all. The attendants noddedsolemnly.

  "Sure we will," one of them said, "if you're a good boy and don't actup rough on us now. Okay?"

  Malone nodded. Carefully, two of the attendants began to unbuckle himwhile the third stood by for reinforcements. Malone made no fuss.

  In five minutes he was naked as--he told himself--a jay-bird. Whatwas so completely nude about those particular birds escaped him forthe moment, but it wasn't important. The three men were all holdingvarious parts of the strait-jacket or of his clothing.

  They were still watching him warily.

  "Look in the pockets," Malone said.

  "Sure," one said. The man holding the jacket reached into it anddropped it as if it were hot.

  "Hey," he announced in a sick voice, "the guy's carrying a gun."

  "A gun?" the second one asked.

  The first one gestured toward the crumpled jacket on the floor. "Lookfor yourself," he said. "A real honest-to-God gun. I could feel it."

  Malone leaned against one wall, looking as nonchalant as it waspossible for him to look in the nude. The room being cool, he felt hewas succeeding reasonably well. "Try the other pocket," he suggested.

  The first attendant gave him a long stare. "What've you got in there,buddy?" he asked. "A howitzer?"

  "Jesus," the second attendant said, without moving toward the jacket."An armed nut. What a world."

  "Try the pocket," Malone said.

  A second went by. The first attendant bent down slowly, picked up thejacket and slipped his hand into the other inside pocket. He came outwith a wallet and flipped it open.

  The others looked over his shoulder.

  There was a long minute of silence.

  "Jesus," the second attendant said, as if it were the only word leftin the language.

  Malone sighed. "There, now," he said. "You see? Suppose you give meback my clothes and let's get down to brass tacks."

  * * * * *

  It wasn't that simple, of course.

  First the attendants had to go and get Dr. Blake, and everybody had toexplain everything three or four times, until Malone was just as sickof being an FBI agent as he had ever been of being a padded-cell case.But, at last, he stood before Dr. Blake in the corridor outside, onceagain fully dressed. Slightly rumpled, of course, but fully dressed.It did, Malone thought, make a difference, and if clothes didn'texactly make the man they were a long way from a hindrance.

  "Mr. Malone," Blake was saying, "I want to offer my apologies--"

  "Perfectly okay," Malone said agreeably. "But I would like to knowsomething. Do you treat all your visitors like this? I mean--themilkman, the mailman, relatives of patients--"

  "It's not often we get someone here who claims to be from the FBI,"Blake said. "And naturally our first thought was that--well, sometimesa patient will come in, just give himself up, so to speak. Hisunconscious mind knows that he needs help, and so he comes to us. Wetry to help him."

  Privately, Malone told himself that it was a hell of a way to run ahospital. Aloud, all he said was: "Sure. I understand perfectly,Doctor."

  Dr. Blake nodded. "And now," he said, "what did you want to talk to meabout?"

  "Just a minute." Malone closed his eyes. He'd told Burris he wouldcheck in, and he was late. "Have you got a phone I can use?"

  "Certainly," Blake said, and led him down the corridor to a smalloffice. Malone went to the phone at one end and began dialing evenbefore Blake shut the door and left him alone.

  The screen lit up instantly with Burris' face. "Malone, where the hellhave you been?" the head of the FBI roared. "I've been trying to getin touch with you--"

  "Sorry," Malone said. "I was tied up."

  "What do you mean, tied up?" Burris said. "Do you know I was justabout to send out a general search order? I thought they'd got you."

  "They?" Malone said, interested. "Who?"

  "How the hell would I know who?" Burris roared.

  "Well, nobody got me," Malone said. "I've been investigating RicePavilion, just like I'm supposed to do."

  "Then why didn't you check in?" Burris asked.

  Malone sighed. "Because I got myself locked up," he said, andexplained. Burris listened with patience.

  When Malone was finished, Burris said: "You're coming right on back."

  "But--"

  "No arguments," Burris told him. "If you're going to let things likethat happen to you you're better off here. Besides, there are plentyof men doing the actual searching. There's no need--"

  Secretly, Malone felt relief. "Well, all right," he said. "But let mecheck out this place first, will you?"

  "Go ahead," Burris said. "But get right on back here."

  Malone agreed and snapped the phone off. Then he turned back to findDr. Blake.

  * * * * *

  Examining hospital records was not an easy job. The inalienable rightof a physician to refuse to disclose confidences respecting a patientapplied even to idiots, imbecile and morons. But Malone had a slightedge, due to Dr. Blake's embarrassment, and he put it mercilessly towork.

  For all the good it did him he might as well have stayed in his cell.There wasn't even the slightest suspicion in any record that any ofthe Rice Pavilion patients were telepathic.

  "Are you sure that's what you're looking for?" Blake asked him, somehours later.

  "I'm sure," Malone said. "When you eliminate the impossible, whateverremains, however improbable, must be the truth."

  "Oh," Blake said. After a second he added: "What does that mean?"

  Malone shrugged. "It's an old saying," he told the doctor. "It doesn'thave to mean anything. It just sounds good."

  "Oh," Blake said again.

  After a while, Malone said farewell to good old Rice Pavilion, andheaded back to Washington. There, he told himself, everything would bepeaceful.

  And so it was. Peaceful and dispiriting.

  Every agent had problems getting reports from hospitals--and not eventhe FBI could open the private files of a licensed and registeredpsychiatrist.

  But the field agents did the best they could and, considering thecircumstances, their best was pretty good.

  Malone, meanwhile, put in two weeks sitting glumly at his Washingtondesk and checking reports as they arrived. They were uniformlydepressing. The United States of America contained more sub-normalminds than Malone cared to think about. There seemed to be enough ofthem to explain the results of any election you were unhappy over.Unfortunately, subnormal was all you could call them. Like thepatients at Rice Pavilion, not one of them appeared to possess anyabnormal psionic abilities whatever.

  There were a couple who were reputed to be poltergeists--but inneither case was there a single shred of evidence to substantiate theclaim.

  At the end of the second week, Malone was just about convinced thathis idea had been a total washout. He himself had been locked up in apadded cell, and other agents had spent a full fortnight digging upimbeciles, while the spy at Yucca Flats had been going right on hismerry way, scooping information out of the men at Project Isle asthough he were scooping beans out of a pot. And, very likely, laughinghimself silly at the feeble efforts of the FBI.

  Who could he be?

  Anyone, Malone told himself unhappily. Anyone at all. He could be thejanitor who swept out the buildings, one of the guards at the gate,one of the minor technicians on another project, or even some oldprospector wandering around the desert with a scintillation counter.

  Is there any limit to telepathic range?


  The spy could even be sitting quietly in an armchair in the Kremlin,probing through several thousand miles of solid earth to peep into thebrains of the men on Project Isle.

  That was, to say the very least, a depressing idea.

  Malone found he had to assume that the spy was in the United States--that, in other words, there was some effective range to telepathiccommunication. Otherwise, there was no point in bothering to continuethe search.

  Therefore, he found one other thing to do. He alerted every agent tothe job of discovering how the spy was