Teachers were apparently resigning all over the place, in virtually
every department of virtually every college. That made sense. And the
other item, on page three, made just as much sense:
HIGHER TAXES VOTED THROUGHOUT U.S.
FOR TEACHER INCOME RISE
State and Federal Aid Also Promised
in Drive to Raise Salaries Now
Apparently, teachers were resigning just as they were about to get
more money than they’d ever seen before. But Malone could fit that
into the pattern easily enough; it was perfectly obvious, once he
thought about it.
Malone didn’t have time to go through much more of the paper; the
facsimile records he’d been waiting for arrived, and he put the _Post_
aside and concentrated on them instead. Maybe somewhere in the records
was the clue he desperately needed.
The PRS was widely spread, all right. It had branches in almost every
major city in the United States, in Europe, South Africa, South
America and Australia. There was even a small branch society in
Greenland. True, the Communist disapproval of such non-materialistic,
un-Marxian objectives as Psychical Research showed up in the fact that
there were no registered branches in the Sino-Soviet bloc. But that,
Malone thought, didn’t really matter. Maybe in Russia they called
themselves the Lenin Study Group, or the Better Borshcht League. He
was fairly sure, from what he’d experienced, that the PRS had some
kind of organization even behind the Iron Curtain.
Money didn’t seem to be much of a problem, either. Malone checked for
the supporters of the organization and found a microfilmed list that
ran into the hundreds of thousands of names, most of them ordinary
people who seemed to be interested in spiritualism and the like, and
who donated a few dollars apiece each year to the PRS. Besides this
mass of small donations, of course, there were a few large ones, from
independently wealthy men who gave support to the organization and
seemed actively interested in its aims.
It wasn’t an unusual picture; it was just an exceptionally big one.
Malone sighed and went on to the personal dossiers.
Sir Lewis Carter himself was a well-known astronomer and
mathematician. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal
Astronomical Society and the Royal Mathematical Society. He had been
knighted for his contributions in higher mathematics only two years
before he had come to live in the United States. Malone went over the
papers dealing with his entry into the country carefully, but they
were all in order and they contained absolutely no clues he could use.
Sir Lewis’ books on political and historical philosophy had been
well-received, and he had also written a novel, _But Some Are More
Equal_, which, for a few weeks after publication, had managed to reach
the bottom of the best-seller list.
And that was that. Malone tried to figure out whether all this
information did him any good at all, and he didn’t have to think for
very long. The answer was no. He opened the next dossier.
Luba Vasilovna Garbitsch had been born in New York. Her mother had
been a woman of Irish descent named Mary O’Keefe, and had died in ’68.
Her father, of course, had now been revealed as a Russian agent, and
was at present making his home, such as it probably was, in good old
Moscow.
Malone sighed. Somewhere in the dossiers, he was sure, there was a
clue, the basic clue that would tell him everything he needed to know.
His prescience had never been so strong; he knew perfectly well that
he was staring at the biggest, most startling and most complete
disclosure of all. And he couldn’t see it.
He stared at the folders for a long minute. What did they tell him?
What was the clue?
And then, very slowly, the soft light of a prodigal sun illuminated
his mind.
“Mr. Malone,” Malone said gently, “you are a damned fool. There are
times when it is necessary to discard the impossible after you have
seen that the obscure is the obvious.”
He wasn’t sure whether that meant anything, or even whether he knew
what he was saying. He was sure of only one thing: the final answer.
And it _was_ obvious. Obvious as all hell.
13
There was, of course, only one thing to do, and only one place to go.
Malone went downstairs without even stopping to wave farewell to the
agent-in-charge, and climbed into the big, specially-built FBI Lincoln
that waited for him.
“Want a driver?” one of the mechanics asked.
“No, thanks,” Malone said. “This one’s a solo job.”
That was for sure. He drove out onto the streets and into the heavy
late afternoon traffic of Washington, D. C. The Lincoln handled
smoothly, but Malone didn’t press his luck among the rushing cars. He
wasn’t in any hurry. He had all the time in the world, and he knew it.
They—and, for once, Malone knew just who “they” were—would still be
waiting for him when he got there.
_If_ he got there, he thought suddenly, dodging a combination
roadblock consisting of a green Plymouth making an illegal turn, a
fourteen-year-old boy on a bicycle and a sweet young girl pushing a
baby carriage. He managed to get past and wiped his forehead with one
hand. He continued driving, even more carefully, until he was out of
the city.
It took quite a lot of time. Washington traffic was getting worse and
worse with every passing month, and the pedestrians were as nonchalant
as ever. As Malone turned a corner, a familiar face popped into view,
practically in front of his car. He swerved and got by without
committing homicide, and a cheerful voice said: “Thanks, sorry.”
“It’s okay, Chester,” Malone said. The big man skipped back to the
sidewalk and watched the car go by. Malone knew him slightly, a
private eye who did some work on the fringes of Washington crime;
basically a nice guy, but a little too active for Malone’s taste.
For a second he thought of asking the man to accompany him, but the
last thing Malone needed was muscle. What he wanted was brains, and he
even thought he might be developing some of those.
He was nearly sure of it by the time he finally did leave the city and
get out onto the highway that went south into the depths of Virginia.
And, while he drove, he began to use that brain, letting his reflexes
take over most of the driving problems now that the Washington traffic
tangle was behind him.
He took all his thoughts from behind the shield that had sheltered
them and arrayed them neatly before him. Everything was perfectly
clear; all he had to do now was explain it.
Malone had wondered, over the years, about the detectives in books.
They always managed to wrap everything up in the last chapter—and
that was all right. But they always had a whole crowd of suspects
listening to them, too. And Malone knew perfectly well that he could
never manage a set-up like that. People would be interrupting him.
Things would happen. Dogs would rush in and start a fight on the
floor. There would be earthquakes, or else somebody would suddenly
faint and interrupt him.
But now, at long last, he realized, he had his chance.
Nobody, he thought happily, could interrupt him. And he could explain
to his heart’s content.
Because the members of the PRS were telepathic. And Malone, he thought
cheerfully, was not.
Somebody, he was sure, would be tuned in on him as he drove toward
their Virginia hiding place. And he hoped that that somebody would
alert everybody else, so they could all tune in and hear his grand
final explanation of everything.
_And a hearty good afternoon to everybody_, he thought. _A very hearty
and happy and sunny good afternoon to all—and most especially to Miss
Luba Garbitsch. I hope she’s the one who’s tuned in—or that somebody
has alerted her by now, because I’d rather talk to her than to anyone
else I can think of out there._
_Nothing personal, you understand. It’s just that I’d like to show off
a little. I don’t need to hide anything from you—as a matter of
plain, simple fact, I can’t. Not with my shield down._
He paused then, and, in his imagination, he could almost hear Lou’s
voice.
“I’m listening, Kenneth,” the voice said. “Go on.”
_Well, then_, he thought. He fished around in his mind for a second,
wondering exactly where to start. Then he decided, in the best
traditions of the detective story, not to mention _Alice in
Wonderland_, to start at the beginning.
_The dear old Psychical Research Society_, he thought, _had been going
along for a good many years now—since the 1880’s, as a matter of
fact, or somewhere near there. That’s a long time and a lot of
research. A lot of famous and intelligent men and women have belonged
to the Society. And in all that time, they’ve worked hard, and worked
sincerely, in testing every kind of psychic phenomenon. They’ve worked
impartially and scientifically to find out whether a given unusual
incident was explicable in terms of known natural laws, or was the
result of some unknown force._
_And it’s hardly surprising that, after about a hundred years of work,
something finally came of it._
“Not surprising at all,” he imagined Lou’s voice saying. “You’re
making things very clear, Kenneth.”
Or had that been “Sir Kenneth”? Malone wasn’t sure, but it didn’t
really matter. He spun the car around a curve in the highway, smiled
gently to himself, and went on.
_Naturally, to the average man in the street, the Society was just a
bunch of crackpots, and the more respected and famous the people who
belonged to it, the happier he was; it just proved his superiority to
them. He didn’t deal with crackpot notions, did he?_
_No, the Society did. And nobody except the members paid much
attention to what was going on._
_I remember one of the book facsimiles you gave me, for instance. Some
man, whose name I can’t recall, wrote a great “exposé” of the Society,
in which he tried to prove that Sir Lewis Carter and certain other
members were trying to take over the world and run it to suit
themselves, making a sort of horrible dictatorship out of their power
and position. At that, he wasn’t really far from the truth, though he
had it turned around a little. But the book shows that he has no
knowledge whatever of what psionics is, or how it works. He seems to
me to be just a little afraid of it, which probably adds to his
ignorance. And, as a result, he got a twisted idea of what the PRS is
actually doing._
He could almost hear Lou’s voice again. “Yes,” she was saying. “I
remember the book. It was put in our reference library for its
humorous aspects.”
_That’s right_, Malone thought. _It would be only funny to you. But it
would be frightening and terrible to an awful lot of people simply
because they wouldn’t understand what the Society was all about._
“All right,” Lou’s voice said helpfully. “And what _is_ it all about?”
Malone settled back in the driver’s seat as the car continued to spin
along the road. _It seems to me_, he thought carefully, _that any
telepath has to go one of two ways. Either, like Her Majesty or the
others we found when we discovered her two years ago, the telepath
ends up insane—or perhaps commits suicide, which is simply one step
further in retreat—or else he learns to understand and control his
own powers, and to understand other human beings so well that, if he
actually did control the world, everyone would benefit in the long
run._
_The difference between the two kinds is the difference between Her
Majesty and the PRS._
“That’s good thinking,” he could hear Lou say.
_No, it isn’t_, he thought; _it’s no more than guessing, and it could
be just as wild as you please. But there is one thing I do know: the
way to get a better world, or anyhow the first step, is to clear the
road ahead. And that means getting rid of the fools, idiots, maniacs,
blockheads, morons, psychopaths, paranoids, timidity-ridden,
fear-worshipers, fanatics, thieves, criminals and a whole lot more._
“Get rid of them?” Lou’s voice said.
_Well_, Malone thought, _I don’t mean they’ve got to be killed or
driven out of the civilized world. You’ve just got to get them out of
any place where their influence is heavily felt on society as a
whole._
“All right,” Lou’s voice said pleasantly. “And how could we go about
that? Do we write nasty letters to the editor?”
_There’s a much more effective way_, Malone thought. _There’s no
trouble in getting rid of a man if you can make him expose himself.
And you’ve managed that pretty well. You’ve thwarted their idiotic
plans, made them stumble over their own fumble-mindedness, played on
their neuroses, concocted errors for them to fight and, in general,
rigged things in any possible way so that they’d quit, or get fired,
or lose elections, or get arrested, or just generally get put out of
circulation somehow._
_It’s extremely effective—and it works very well._
_Sometimes, you’ve only had to put the blocks to individuals.
Sometimes whole nations have had to go. And sometimes it’s been
in-between, and you’ve managed to foul up whole organizations with
misplaced papers missent messages, error, and changed minds and
everything else you can think of._
_As a matter of fact, it sounds like fun._
“Well,” he imagined Lou saying, “it is fun, in away. But it’s a deadly
serious business, too.”
_Sure it is_, Malone thought. _I think the first time that came home
to me was when I saw what was happening in Russia, and compared it to
what had been going on over here. Tom Boyd saw that, too, when I
pointed it out to him—as you probably know if you were spying on my
mind at the time._
_Not that I mind that in the least._
_Come more often, by all means._
_But Tom, in case you weren’t listening, said: “Over here there are a
lot of confused jerks and idiots.... And in Russia there’s a lot of
confusion.”_
_Now, that’s perfectly true, and it spells out the difference. Over
here, you’ve been confusing the jerks and the idiots, getting rid of
them so the system can work properly. Over in Russia, on the other
hand, you’ve left the jerks and the idiots all alone to do their dirty
work, and you’ve just added to the confusion where necessary, so that
the system will break down of its own weight._
“But, after all,” Lou said, “things look pretty bad over here, too.
Look at the papers.”
_Everybody_, Malone thought, _has been telling me to go and look at the
newspapers. And when I do look at them I find all sorts of evidence of
confusion. Teachers resigning, senators and representatives goofing up
bills on Congress, gang wars cluttering up the streets with cadavers
and making things tough for the Sanitation Department, factional fights
in various organizations. Now, all of that looks pretty horrible in the
papers, but do you know something? It isn’t horrible at all._
_It’s pretty damn good, as a matter of fact._
_The teachers who are resigning, for instance, are the nincompoops
who’ve got to be pruned out so that competent teachers can come in.
And, with the higher salaries, more and more competent men and women
are going to be attracted to the job. The universities are going to be
freer and better places to work in; they won’t be monopolies any
more._
“Monopolies?” Lou said.
_In restraint of knowledge_, Malone thought. _The old monopoly was in
restraint of trade, and legal action helped to kill that kind. The
monopoly in restraint of knowledge took a little more killing, but
you’re doing the job quite nicely. And not only in the schools._
_The factional fights are having the same result. Look at the AAAM,
for instance. That organization is a monopoly, pure and simple.
Simple, anyhow. And what the factional fights are doing to it is just
breaking up the monopoly and letting knowledge free again._
_And then we come to Congress. Senators and representatives are having
a terrible time, some of them. There’s a fight going on between
Furbisher and Deeks because Deeks has discovered some evidence against
Furbisher. Who’s having the terrible time?_
_All of them?_
_Nope. Furbisher is. Deeks isn’t._
_And that’s the way it’s going all over. The useful, necessary
legislation is going through Congress now without being cluttered up
by stupid dam bills and water bills and other idiocies that simply
clog the works._
_And then, of course, there are the gang wars. Now, I feel as sorry
for the Sanitation Department as anybody, but at least they’re
cleaning the streets for good now. The boys who are dying off and
getting sent to hospitals and jails are just the ones who should have
been sent away long ago. Everybody knows that, but nobody can prove
it._
_Except the PRS._
_And the PRS is busy doing just what it can about that proof._
_And all it takes is a few of you. I don’t know how many—I don’t know
how many of you there really are, for that matter. But it must be a
fair number to stock all your branches with “top-level” executives and
the lower-level men and women who really believe in the PRS blind, and
do their best to keep it working._
_There are probably a lot of ways it might work, but the simplest and
best way I can think of is this one: there’s a clearing-house sort of
set-up, and information comes in from various telepathic spies working
for the PRS, about various projected activities of the imbecile
contingent._
_And, from this information, you figure out the best time and place
for lightning to strike, and you select the kind of lightning it’s
going to be. Here it’s a misplaced letter, there some “facts” that
aren’t facts, and somewhere else a dropped package of secret records.
Somebody goofs—and is exposed._
_Maybe it works on the local-organization level. Maybe there are teams
all over the country, all ready to synchronize their minds and jab
somebody in the thought processes at just the right time, in just the
right way, as soon as they get the word. That’s one way of doing it,
maybe the best way._
_There are others, but it doesn’t really matter how that end of it
works. The important thing is that it does work._
_And, when it works, it can certainly create quite a mess. Yes-sirree,
Bob. Or Lou, as the case may be._
_I sure hope somebody’s picking all this up, because I’d hate to have
to explain it again when I get there._
_Are you there, anybody?_
Malone imagined he heard Lou’s voice. “Yes, Ken,” she said. “Yes, I’m
here.”
But, of course, there was no way for them to get through to him. They
were telepathic, but Kenneth J. Malone wasn’t he told himself sadly.
_Hello, out there_, he thought. _I hope you’ve been listening so far,
because there isn’t going to be too much more. But there are a couple
of things that still need to be cleared up. I’ve got some answers, but
there are others I’m going to need._
_There’s Russia, for instance. It does seem to me as if your teams in
Russia, whatever they’re calling themselves, are having a lot more fun
than the U. S. teams. For one thing they’ve got an easier job._
_In this country, the teams are looking for ways to get rid of the
blockheads, and there are a lot of them. In Russia, you don’t have to
get rid of the blockheads. All you have to do is clear the road for
them. And you can do that by fouling up the more intelligent people._
“Intelligent people?” he could hear Lou say.
_Intelligence doesn’t mean good sense_, Malone thought. _I don’t doubt
that the men who are maintaining Russia’s power are intelligent men—
but what they’re doing is bad for the world as a whole, in the long
run._
_So you foul them up, and leave the blockheads a clear field to run
the country into the ground. And that’s easier than fouling up the
blockheads._
_Sure it is._
_There are fewer intelligent, active people around than there are
blockheads._
_Always were._
_And maybe there always will be—but not if the PRS can help it._
_Oh, and by the way_, Malone thought. _You do know how I spotted you,
don’t you? You were tuned in then, weren’t you?_
_And I don’t mean just Lou. I mean all of you._
_In a world of blind men, the man who can see stands out. In a world
of the insane, the sane man stands out._
_And in a world where organizations are regularly being confused and
fouled up—either as whole organizations, or through your attempts to
get rid of individual members—a smooth-running, efficient
organization stands out like a sore thumb._
_Frankly, it took me longer to see it than it should have._
_But I’ve got the answer at last—the main answer. Though, as I say,
there are some others I’d like to have._
_Like, for instance, Russia. And exactly what did happen that night in
Moscow._
14
At this point Malone suddenly became aware of a sound that was not
coming from his own mind. It was coming from somewhere behind his car,
and it was a very loud sound. It was, he discovered when he looked
back, the siren of a highway patrolman on a motorcycle, coming toward
him at imminent risk of life and limb and waving frantically with an
unbelievably free hand.
Malone glanced down at the speedometer. With a sigh, he realized that
his reflexes had allowed him a little leeway, and that he was going
slightly over the legal speed limit for this Virginia highway. He
shook his head, eased up on the accelerator, and began to apply the
brakes.
By the time he had pulled over to the side of the road, the highway
patrolman was coming to a halt behind the big Lincoln. Malone watched
him check the number on the rear plate and then walk slowly around to
the window on the driver’s side. “Can’t you hurry?” Malone muttered
under his breath. “All this Virginian ease is okay in its place,
but—” In the meanwhile he was getting out his identification, and by
the time the patrolman reached him he had it in his hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Sorry?” the patrolman said, frowning. He had an open, boyish face
with freckles and a pug nose. He looked like somebody’s kid brother,
very dependable but just a little cute. “What for?” he said.
Malone shrugged. “What else?” he said. “Speeding.”
“Oh, that,” the patrolman said. “Why, don’t you worry about that.”
“Don’t worry about it?” Malone said. This particular kid brother was
obviously a little nuts, and should have been put away years ago. He
ground his teeth silently, but he didn’t make any complaints. It was
never wise, he knew, to irritate a traffic cop of any sort.
“Sure not,” the patrolman said. “Why, we don’t pay any attention out
here until a fella hits ten miles over the posted limit. That’s okay.”
“Fine,” Malone said cheerily. “Then I can drive on?”
“Now, just hold it a second there,” the patrolman said. “Let’s see
your identification if you don’t mind.”
Malone held it out wordlessly. The patrolman, obviously intent on
finding out just what kind of paper the card was made of, who had
printed it and whether there were any germs on it, gave it a long,
careful scrutiny. Malone shifted slightly in his seat, counted to ten
and managed to say nothing.
Then the patrolman started reading the card aloud. “Kenneth J.
Malone,” he said in a tone of some surprise. “Special Agent of the
FBI.” He looked up. “That right?” he said. “What it says here?”
“That’s right,” Malone said. “And you can have my autograph later.” He
regretted the last sentence as soon as it was out of his mouth, but
the patrolman didn’t seem to notice.
“Then you’re the man, all right,” he said happily. “I caught your
plate number as you went on by me, back there.”
“Plate number?” Malone said. “What am I supposed to have done?” He’d
overslept, he knew, but that was the only violation of even his
personal code that he could think of. And it didn’t seem likely that
the Virginia Highway Patrol was sending out its men to arrest people
who overslept.
“Why, Mr. Malone,” the patrolman said with honest surprise written all
over his Norman Rockwell face, “as far as I know you didn’t do a thing
wrong.”
“But—”
“They just told us to be on the watch for a black 1973 Lincoln with
your number, and see if you were driving it. They did say you’d
probably be driving it.”
“Good,” Malone said. “And I am. And I’d like to continue doing so.” He
paused and then added, “But what happened?”
“Well,” the patrolman said, in exactly the manner of a man starting
out to tell a long, interesting story about the Wars of the Spanish
Succession, “well, sir, it seems FBI Headquarters in Washington, they
got in touch with the Highway Patrol Headquarters, down in Richmond,
and Highway Patrol Headquarters—”
“Down in Richmond,” Malone muttered resignedly.
“That’s right,” the patrolman said in a pleased voice. “Well, they
called all the local barracks, and then we got the message on our
radios.” He stopped, exactly as if he thought he had finished.
Malone counted to ten again, made it twenty and then found that he was
capable of speech. “What?” he said in a calm, patient voice, “was the
message about?”
“Well,” the patrolman said, “it seems some fella down in Washington,
fella name of Thomas Boyd, they said it was, wants to talk to you
pretty bad.”
“He could have called me on the car phone,” Malone said in what he
thought was a reasonable tone of voice. “He didn’t have to—”
“There’s no call for yelling at me, Mr. Malone,” the patrolman said
reproachfully. “I only obeyed my orders, which were to locate your
black 1973 Lincoln and see if you were driving it, and give you a
message. That’s all.”
“It’s enough,” Malone muttered. “He didn’t have to send out the
militia to round me up.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Malone,” the patrolman said. “Not the militia. Highway
Patrol. We don’t rightly have any connection with the militia at all.”
“Glad to hear it,” Malone said. He picked up the receiver of the car
phone and waited for the buzz that would show that he was connected
with Communications Central in Washington.
It didn’t come.
“Oh, yes,” the patrolman said suddenly. “I suppose that’s why this Mr.
Boyd, he couldn’t call you on the car telephone, Mr. Malone. The
message we got, it also says that the fella at the FBI garage in
Washington just forgot to plug in that phone there.”
“Oh,” Malone said. “Well, thanks for telling me.”
“You’re right welcome, Mr. Malone,” the patrolman said “You can plug
it in now.”
“I intend to,” Malone said through his teeth. He closed his eyes for a
long second, and then opened them again. He saw the interested face of
the patrolman looking down at him. Hurriedly, he turned away, felt
underneath the dashboard until he found the dangling plug, and
inserted it into its socket.
The buzz now arrived.
Malone heaved a great sigh and punched for Boyd’s office. Then he
looked around.
The patrolman was still standing at the car window. He was looking
down at Malone with an interested, slightly blank expression.
Malone thought of several things to say, and chose the most harmless.
“Thanks a lot,” he told the patrolman. “I appreciate your stopping off
to let me know.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Malone,” the patrolman said. “That was my
orders, to do that. And even if they weren’t, it was no trouble at
all. Any time. I’d always be glad to do anything for the FBI.”
“Boyd here,” a tinny voice from the phone said.
Malone eyed the patrolman sourly. “Malone here,” he said. “What’s the
trouble, Tom? I—No, wait a minute.”
“Ken!” Boyd’s voice said. “I’ve been trying to—”
“Hold it a second,” Malone said. He opened his mouth, and then he saw
a car go by. The patrolman hadn’t seen it. Malone felt sorry for the
driver, but not too sorry. “Say!” he said to the patrolman.
“Yes, sir?” the patrolman said.
“That boy was really going, wasn’t he?” Malone said. “He must have
been doing at least ninety.”
The patrolman jerked his head around to stare at the disappearing car.
“Well—” he said, and then: “Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Malone. Thanks.
I’ll see you later.” He raced for his machine, swung aboard and roared
down the road, guiding with one hand and manipulating the controls of
his radar set with the other.
Malone waved him a cheery farewell, and got back to the phone.
“Okay, Tom,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“Who was that you were talking to?” Boyd asked.
“Oh, just a motorcycle patrolman,” Malone said. “He wanted to be
helpful, so I told him to go chase a Buick.”
“Why a Buick?” Boyd said, interestedly.
“Why not?” Malone said. “There happened to be one handy at the time.
Now, what’s on your mind?”
“I’ve been searching all over hell for you,” Boyd said. “I wish you’d
just leave some word where you were going, and then I wouldn’t have
to—”
“Damn it,” Malone cut in. “Tom, just tell me what you want. In
straightforward, simple language. It just took me ten minutes to pry a
few idiotic facts out of a highway patrolman. Don’t make me go through
it all over again with you.”
“Okay, okay,” Boyd said. “Keep your pants on. But here’s the dope: I
just flew in from New York, and I brought all the files on the case—
the stuff you left in your office in New York, remember?”
“Right,” Malone said. “Thanks.”
“And I think we may be able to get the Big Cheese,” Boyd went on.
“Manelli?” Malone said.
“None other than the famous Cesare Antonio,” Boyd said. “It seems two
of his most valued lieutenants were found in a garage in Queens,
practically weighted down with machine-gun bullets.”
Malone thought of Manelli, complaining sadly about the high overhead
of murder. “And where does that get us?” he said.
“Well,” Boyd said, “whoever did the job forgot to search the bodies.”
“Oh-oh,” Malone said.
“Very much oh-oh,” Boyd said. “They’re loaded down, not only with
lead, but with paper. There are documents linking Manelli right up to
the International Truckers’ Union—a direct tie-in with Mike Sand. And
Sand now says he’s tied in with the Great Lakes Transport Union in
Chicago.”
“This sounds like a big one,” Malone said.
“You have no idea,” Boyd said. “And in the middle of all this, Burris
called.”
“Burris?” Malone said.
“That’s right,” Boyd said. “He wants me to go on down to Florida and
take over the investigation of the Flarion assassination. So it looks
as if I’m going to miss most of the fun.”
“Too bad,” Malone said.
“But maybe not all,” Boyd said. “It may tie in with the case we’re
working on. At least, that’s what Burris thinks.”
“Yes,” Malone said. “I can see why he thinks so. Did he have any
message for me, by the way?”
“Not exactly,” Boyd said.
Malone blinked. “Not exactly?” he said. “What’s that supposed to
mean?”
“Well,” Boyd said, “he says he does have something to tell you, but
it’ll wait until he sees you. Then, he says, he’ll tell you
personally.”
“Great,” Malone said.
“Maybe it’s a surprise,” Boyd said. “Maybe you’re fired.”
“I wouldn’t have the luck,” Malone said. “But if I get any leads on
the Flarion job, I’ll let you know right away.”
“Sure,” Boyd said. “Thanks. And—by the way, what are you doing now?”
“Me?” Malone said. “I’m driving.”
“Yes, I know,” Boyd said patiently. “To where, and why? Or is this
another secret? Sometimes I think nobody loves me any more.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Malone said. “The entire city of Miami Beach is
awaiting your arrival with bated breath.”
“But what are you doing?” Boyd said.
Malone chose his words carefully. “I’m just checking a lead,” he said
at last. “I don’t know if it’s going to pan out or not, but I thought
I’d drive down to Richmond and check on a name I’ve got. I’ll call you
about it in the morning, Tom, and let you know what the result is.”
“Oh,” Boyd said. “Okay. Sure. So long, Ken.”
“So long,” Malone said. He hung up the phone, put the car into gear
again and roared off down U. S. Highway Number One. He didn’t feel
entirely happy about the way things had gone; he’d been forced to lie
to Tom Boyd, and that just wasn’t right.
However, there was no help for it. It was actually better this way, he
told himself hopefully. After all, the less Tom knew from now on, the
better off he was going to be. The better off everyone would be.
He went on through Fredericksburg without incident, but he didn’t
continue on to Richmond. Instead, he turned off U. S. 1 when he
reached a little town called Thornburg, which was smaller than he had
believed a town could be and live. He began following a secondary road
out into the countryside.
The countryside, of course, was filled with country, in the shape of
hills, birds, trees, flowers, grass and other distractions to the
passing motorist. It took Malone quite a bit longer than he expected
to find the place he was looking for, and he finally came to the sad
conclusion that country estates are just as difficult to find as
houses in Brooklyn. In both cases, he thought, there was the same
frantic search down what seemed to be a likely route, the same
disappointment when the route turned out to lead nowhere, and the same
discovery that no one had ever heard of the place and, in fact,
doubted very strongly whether it even existed.
But he found it at last, rounding a curve in a narrow black-top road
and spotting the house beyond a grove of trees. He recognized it
instantly.
He had seen it so often that he felt as if he knew it intimately.
It was a big, rambling, Colonial-type mansion, painted a blinding and
beautiful white, with a broad, pillared porch and a great carved front
door. The front windows were curtained in rich purples, and before the
house was a great front garden, and tall old trees. Malone
half-expected Scarlett O’Hara to come tripping out of the house at any
moment.
Inside it, however, if Malone were right, was not the magnetic
Scarlett. Inside the house were some of the most important members of
the Psychical Research Society.
But it was impossible to tell from the outside. Nothing moved on the
well-kept grounds, and the windows didn’t show so much as the flutter
of a purple curtain. There was no sound. No cars were parked around
the house, nor, Malone thought as he remembered _Gone With the Wind,_
were there any horses or carriages.
The place looked deserted.
Malone thought he knew better, but it took a few minutes for him to
get up enough courage to go up the long driveway. He stared at the
house. It was an old one, he knew, built long before the Civil War and
originally commanding a huge plantation. Now, all that remained of
that vast parcel of land was the few acres that surrounded the house.
But the original family still inhabited it, proud of the house and of
their part in its past. Over the years, Malone knew, they had kept it
up scrupulously, and the place had been both restored and modernized
on the inside without harming the classic outlines of the
hundred-and-fifty-year-old structure.
A fence surrounded the estate, but the front gate was swinging open.
Malone saw it and took a deep breath. Now, he told himself, or never.
He drove the Lincoln through the opening slowly, alert for almost
anything.
There was no disturbance. Thirty yards from the front door he pulled
the car to a cautious stop and got out. He started to walk toward the
building. Each step seemed to take whole minutes, and everything he
had thought raced through his mind again.
Nothing seemed to move anywhere, except Malone himself.
Was he right? Were the PRS people really here? Or had he been led
astray by them? Had he been manipulated as easily as they had
manipulated so many others?
That was possible. But it wasn’t the only possibility.
Suppose, he thought, that he was perfectly right, and that the PRS
members were waiting inside. And suppose, too, that he’d misunderstood
their motives.
Suppose they were just waiting for him to get a little closer.
Malone kept walking.
In just a few steps, he would be close enough so that a bullet aimed
at him from the house hadn’t a real chance of missing him.
And it didn’t have to be bullets, either. They might have set a trap,
he thought, and were waiting for him to walk right into it. Then they
would hold him prisoner while they devised ways to....
To what? He didn’t know. And that was even worse; it called up
horrible terrors from the darkest depths of Malone’s mind. He
continued to walk forward, feeling about as exposed as a restaurant
lamb chop caught with its panty down.
He reached the steps that led up to the porch, and took them one at a
time.
He stood on the porch. A long second passed.
He took a step toward the high, wide and handsome oaken door. Then he
took another step, and another.
What was waiting for him inside?
He took a deep breath, and pressed the doorbell button.
The door swung open immediately, and Malone involuntarily stepped
back.
The owner of the house smiled at him from the doorway. Malone let out
his breath in one long sigh of relief.
“I was hoping it would be you,” he said weakly. “May I come in?”
“Why, certainly, Malone. Come on in. We’ve been expecting you, you
know,” said Andrew J. Burris, director of the FBI.
15
Malone sat, quietly relaxed and almost completely at ease, in the
depths of a huge, comfortable, old-fashioned Morris chair. Three
similar chairs were clustered with his, around a squat, massive coffee
table made of a single slab of dark wood set on short, curved legs.
Malone looked around at the other three with a relaxed feeling of
recognition: Andrew J. Burris, Sir Lewis Carter, and Luba Vasilovna
Garbitsch.
“That mind shield of yours,” Burris was saying, “is functioning very
well. We weren’t entirely sure you had actually located us until you
pulled into that driveway.”
“I wasn’t entirely sure what I was locating,” Malone said.
“And so it’s over,” Burris said with a satisfied air. “Everything’s
over.”
“And just beginning,” Sir Lewis put in. He drew a pipe from an inside
pocket and began to fill it.
“And, of course,” Burris said, “just beginning. Things do that; they
go round and round in circles. It’s what makes everything so
confusing.”
“And so much fun,” Lou said, leaning back in her chair. She didn’t
look hostile now, Malone thought; she looked like a cat, wary but
content. He decided that he liked this Lou even better than the old
one. Lou, at home among her psionic colleagues, was even more than
he’d ever thought she could be.
“More what?” she said suddenly. Burris jerked upright a trifle.
“What’s more what?” he said. “Damn it, let’s stick to one thing or the
other. As soon as this thing starts mixing talk and thought it
confuses me.”
“Never mind,” Lou said. She smiled across the table at Malone.
Malone jerked a finger under his collar.
“What made you decide to come here?” Sir Lewis said. He had the pipe
lit now, and blew a cloud of fragrant smoke over the table.
Malone wondered where to start. “One of the clues,” he said at last,
“was the efficiency of the FBI. It hit me the same way the efficiency
of the PRS had hit me, while I was looking at the batch of reports
that had been run off so rapidly.”
“Ah,” Sir Lewis said. “The dossiers.”
“Dossiers?” Burris said.
Sir Lewis puffed at his pipe. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought you had
been tuned in for that.”
“I was busy,” Burris said. “I can’t tune into everything. After all,
I’ve only got one mind.”
“And two hands,” Malone said at random.
“At least,” Lou said. Their eyes met in a glance of perfect
understanding.
“What the hell do hands have to do with it?” Burris said.
Sir Lewis shrugged. “Tune in and see,” he said. “It’s an old joke; but
you’ll never really adjust to telepathy unless you practice.”
“Damn it,” Burris said, “I practice. I’m always practicing. This and
that and the other thing—after all, I am the director of the FBI.
There’s a lot to be done.”
Sir Lewis puffed at his pipe again. “At any rate,” he said smoothly,
“Mr. Malone had requested some dossiers on us. On the PRS, myself, and
Luba. They arrived very quickly. The efficiency of that arrival, and
the efficiency he’d been noting about the FBI ever since he began work
on this case, finally struck home to him.”
“Ah,” Burris said. “You see? The FBI’s a full-time job. It’s got to be
efficient.”
“Of course,” Sir Lewis said soothingly.
“Anyhow,” Malone said, “Sir Lewis is right. While every other branch
of the government was having its troubles with the Great Confusion,
the FBI was ticking along like a transistorized computer.”
“A good start,” Sir Lewis said.
“Darn good,” Burris said. “Malone, I knew I could depend on you.
You’re a good man.”
Malone swallowed hard. “Well, anyway,” he said after a pause, “when I
saw that I began to remember a few other things. Starting with a
couple of years ago, when we first found Her Majesty, remember?”
“I’ll never forget it,” Burris said fervently. “She knighted me.
Knight Commander of the Queen’s Own FBI. What a moment.”
“Thrilling,” Malone said. “But you got to Yucca Flats for your
knighting awfully quickly, a little too fast even for a modern plane.”
“It had to be done,” Burris said. “Anyhow, I’ve never really liked
planes. Basically unsafe. People crash in them.”
“But you wouldn’t,” Malone said. “You could always teleport yourself
out.”
“Sure,” Burris said. “But that’s troublesome. Why bother? Anyhow, I’d
been to Yucca Flats before, so I could teleport there—a little way
down the road, where I could meet my car—without any trouble.”
“Anyhow, that was one thing,” Malone said. “And then there was Her
Majesty, when she pointed at that visiphone screen and accused you of
being the telepathic spy. Remember?”
“She wasn’t pointing at me,” Burris said. “She was pointing at the man
in the next room. How about you doing some remembering?”
“Sure she was,” Malone said. “But it was just a little coincidence.
And I have a hunch she felt, subconsciously, that there was something
not quite right about you.”
“Maybe,” Burris conceded. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“It doesn’t?” Malone said.
“Now look, Malone,” Burris said. “None of this is proof. Not real
proof. Not the kind the FBI has trained you to look for.”
“But—”
“What I want to know,” Burris said, “is why you came here, to my home?
And in spite of everything you’ve said, that hasn’t been tied down.”
Malone frowned. After a second’s thought he said, “Well.... All I know
is that it just seemed obvious. That’s all.”
“Indeed it is,” Sir Lewis said. “But one of the things we’ll have to
teach you, my boy, is how to distinguish between a deduction from
observed fact and a psionic intuition. You’ve been confusing them for
some years now.”
“I have?” Malone said.
“Sure you have,” Burris said. “And, what’s more—”
“Well, he’s no worse than you are, Andrew,” Lou said.
Burris turned. “Me?” he said in a voice of withering scorn.
“Certainly,” Lou said. “After all, you’ve never really become used to
mixtures of thought and speech. And, what’s more, you’ve been using
telepathy so long that when you try to communicate with nothing but
words you only confuse yourself.”
“And everybody else,” Sir Lewis added.
“Hmpf,” Burris said. “I’m busy all the time. I haven’t got any extra
time for practice.”
Malone nodded, comparatively unsurprised. He’d wondered for years how
a man so obviously unable to express himself clearly could run an
organization like the FBI as well as he did. Having psionic abilities
evidently led to drawbacks as well as advantages.
“Actually,” he said, “my prescience made one mistake.”
“Really?” Burris said, looking both worried and pleased about it.
“I expected the place to be full of people,” Malone said. “I thought
the elite corps of the PRS would be here.”
“Oh,” Burris said, looking crestfallen.
“Why, that was no mistake,” Sir Lewis said. “As a matter of fact, they
are all here. But they’re quite busy at the moment; things are coning
to a head, you know, and they must work quite undisturbed.”
“And this,” Burris added, “is a good place for it. There are sixty
rooms in this house. Sixty.”
“That’s a lot of rooms,” Malone said politely.
“A mansion,” Burris said. “A positive mansion. And my family has lived
here ever since—”
“I’m sure Ken isn’t very interested in your family just now,” Lou
broke in.
“My family,” Burris said with dignity, “is a very interesting family.”
“I’m sure it must be,” Lou said demurely. Sir Lewis choked with
laughter suddenly and began waving his pipe. After a minute, Malone
joined in.
“Damn it,” Burris said. “Let’s stick to one thing or the other. Did I
say that?”
“Twice,” Malone said.
“Sixty rooms,” Burris said. “All built by my family. And local
contractors, of course. That’s enough to house sixty rooms full of
people. And that number of people is a large houseful, I should
think.”
“It sounds like a lot,” Malone said.
“It is a lot,” Burris said. “All in my house. The house my family
built.”
“And we’re grateful for it,” Sir Lewis said soothingly. “We truly
are.”
“Good,” Burris said.
“You must have had a large family,” Lou said.
“A large family,” Burris said, “and many guests. Many, many guests.
From all over. Including famous people. General Hood slept in this
house, and he slept very well indeed.”
“As a matter of fact,” Lou added, “he’s still sleeping. They call it
being dead.”
“That’s not funny,” Burris snapped.
“Sorry,” Lou said. “It was meant to be.”
“I—” Burris shut his mouth and glared.
Malone was far away, thinking of the sixty rooms full of people,
sitting quietly, their minds ranging into the distance, meshed
together in small units. It was a picture that frightened and
comforted him at the same time. He wasn’t sure he liked it, but he
certainly didn’t dislike it, either.
After all, he told himself confusedly, too many cooks save a stitch in
time.
He veered away from that sentence quickly. “Tell me,” he said, “were
you receiving my broadcast on the way here?”
Burris and Sir Lewis nodded. Lou started to nod, too, but stopped and
looked surprised. “You mean you didn’t know we were?” she said.
“How could I know?” Malone said. “After all, I was just tossing it out
and hoping that somebody was on the listening end.”
“But of course somebody was,” Lou said. “I was.”
“Good,” Malone said. “But I still don’t see how I was supposed to know
that you—”
“I answered you, silly,” Lou said. “I kept on answering you.
Remember?”
Malone blinked, focused and then said, very slowly, “That was my
imagination. Please tell me it was my imagination before I go nuts.”
“Sorry,” Lou said. “It wasn’t.”
“But that kind of thing,” Malone said, “it takes a tremendous amount
of power, doesn’t it?”
“Not when the receiver is a telepath,” Lou said sweetly.
Malone nodded slowly. “That,” he said, “is exactly what I’m afraid of.
Don’t tell me—”
There was silence.
“Well?” Malone said.
“You said not to tell you,” Lou said instantly.
“All right,” Malone said. “I rescind the order. Am I a telepath, or am
I not?”
Lou’s lips didn’t move. But then, they didn’t have to.
The message came, unbidden, into Malone’s mind.
_Of course you are. That was the whole reason for Andrew’s assigning
you to this type of case._
“My God,” Malone said softly.
Sir Lewis laid down his pipe in a handy ashtray. “Of course,” he said,
“you will find it difficult to pick up anyone but Lou, at first. The
rapport between you two is really quite strong.”
“Very strong indeed,” Lou murmured. Malone found himself beginning to
blush.
“It will be some time yet,” Sir Lewis went on, “before you can really
call yourself a telepath, my boy.”
“I’ll bet it will,” Malone said. “Before I can call myself a telepath
I’m going to have to get thoroughly used to the idea. And that’s going
to take a long, long time indeed.”
“You only think that,” Sir Lewis said. “Actually, you’re used to the
idea now. That was Andrew’s big job.”
“His big job?” Malone said. “Now, wait a minute—”
“You don’t think I picked you for our first psionics case out of thin
air, do you?” Burris said. “Before anything else, you had to be forced
to accept the fact that such things as telepaths really existed.”
“Oh, they do,” Malone said. “They certainly do.”
“There’s me, for instance,” Burris said. “But you had to be convinced.
So I ordered you to go out and find one.”
“Like the Bluebird of Happiness,” Malone said.
Burris frowned. “What’s like the Bluebird of Happiness?” he said.
“You are,” Malone said.
“I am not,” Burris said indignantly. “Bluebirds eat worms. My God,
Malone.”
“But the Bluebird,” Malone said doggedly, “was right at home all the
time, while everyone searched for it far away. And I had to go far
away to find a telepath, when you were the one who ordered me to do
it.”
“Right,” Burris said. “So you went and found Her Majesty. And, when
you did find her, she forced acceptance on you simply by being Her
Majesty and proving to you, once and for all, that she could read
minds.”
“Great,” Malone said. “Of course, I could have got myself killed
taking these lessons—”
“We were watching you,” Burris said. “If anything had happened, we’d
have been right on the spot.”
“In time to bury the body,” Malone said. “I think that’s very
thoughtful of you.”
“We would have arrived in time to save you,” Burris said. “Don’t
quibble. You’re alive, aren’t you?”
“Well,” Malone said slowly, “if you’re not sure, I don’t know how I
can convince you.”
“There,” Burris said triumphantly. “You see?”
Malone sighed wearily. “Okay,” he said. “So you sent me out to find a
telepath and to prove to me that there were such things. And I did.
And then what happened?”
“You had a year,” Burris said, “to get used to the idea of somebody
reading your mind.”
“Thanks,” Malone said. “Of course, I didn’t know it was you.”
“It was Her Majesty too,” Burris said. “Everybody.”
“Good old Malone,” Malone said. “The human peep-show.”
“Now, that’s what we mean,” Sir Lewis broke in. “Subconsciously, you
disliked the idea of leaving your thoughts bare to anyone, even a
sweet little old lady. To some extent, you still do. But that will
pass.”
“Goody,” Malone said.
“The residue is simply not important,” Sir Lewis went on. “Your
telepathic talents prove that.”
“Oh, fine,” Malone said. “Here I am reading minds and teleporting and
all sorts of things. What will the boys back at Headquarters think
now?”
“We’ll get to that,” Burris said. “But that first case did one more
thing for you. Because you didn’t like the idea of leaving your mind
open, you began to develop a shield. That allowed you some sort of
mental privacy.”
“And then,” Malone said, “I met Mike Fueyo and his little gang of
teleporting juvenile delinquents.”
“So that you could develop a psionic ability of your own,” Burris
said. “That completed your acceptance. But it took a threat to
solidify that shield. That was step three. When you discovered your
mind was being tampered with—”
“The shield started growing stronger,” Malone said. “Sure. Her Majesty
told me that, though she didn’t know why.”
“Right,” Burris said.
“But, wait a minute,” Malone said. “How could I do all that without
knowing it? How would I know that some of my thoughts were safe behind
a shield if I didn’t know the shield existed and couldn’t even tell if
my mind were being read?” He paused. “Does that make sense?” he asked.
“It does,” Burris said, “but it shouldn’t.”
“What?” Malone said.
“Two years ago, you had the answer to that one,” Burris said. “Dr.
O’Connor’s machine. Remember why it did detect when a person’s mind
was being read?”
“Oh,” Malone said. “Oh, sure. He said that any human being would know,
subconsciously, whether his mind was being read.”
“He did, indeed,” Burris said. “And then we came to the fourth step:
to put you in rapport with some psionicist who could teach you how to
control the shield, how to raise and lower it, you might say. To learn
to accept other thoughts, as well as reject them. To learn to accept
your full telepathic talent. That was Lou’s job.”
“Lou’s ... job?” Malone said. He felt his own shield go up. The
thoughts behind it weren’t pleasant. Lou had been ... well, hired to
stay with him. She had pretended to like him; it was part of her job.
That was perfectly clear now.
Horribly clear.
“You are now on your way,” Sir Lewis said, “to being a real
psionicist.”
“Fine,” Malone said dully. “But why me? Why not, oh, Wolfe Wolf? I’d
think he’d have a better chance than I would.”
“My secretary,” Burris said, “has talents enough of his own. But you,
you’re something brand-new. It’s wonderful, Malone. It’s exciting.”
“It’s a new taste thrill,” Malone murmured. “Try Bon-Ton B-Complex
Bolsters. Learn to eat your blanket as well as sleep with it.”
“What?” Burris said.
“Never mind,” Malone said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“But I—”
“I know you wouldn’t,” Malone said, “because I don’t.”
Sir Lewis cleared his throat “My dear boy,” he said, “you represent a
breakthrough. You are an adult.”
“That,” Malone said testily, “is not news.”
“But you are a telepathic adult,” Sir Lewis said. “Many of them are
capable of developing it into a useful ability. Children who have the
talent may accidentally develop the ability to use it, but that almost
invariably results in insanity. Without proper guidance, a child is no
more capable of handling the variety of impressions it receives from
adult minds than it is capable of understanding a complex piece of
modern music. The effort to make a coherent whole out of the
impression overstrains the mind, so to speak, and the damage is
permanent.”
“So here I am,” Malone said, “and I’m not nuts. At least I don’t think
I’m nuts.”
“Because you are an adult,” Sir Lewis went on. “Telepathy seems to be
almost impossible to develop in an adult, even difficult to test for
it. A child may be tested comparatively simply; an adult, seldom or
never.”
He paused to relight his pipe.
“However,” he went on, “the Psychical Research Society’s executive
board discovered a method of bringing out the ability in a talented
child as far back as 1931. All of us who are sane telepaths today owe
our ability to that process, which was applied to us, in each case,
before the age of sixteen.”
“How about me?” Malone said.
“You,” Sir Lewis said, “are the first adult ever to learn the use of
psionic powers from scratch.”
“Oh,” Malone said. “And that’s why Mike Fueyo, for instance, could
learn to teleport, though his older sister couldn’t.”
“Mike was an experiment,” Sir Lewis said. “We decided to teach him
teleportation without teaching him telepathy. You saw what happened.”
“Sure I did,” Malone said. “I had to stop it.”
“We were forced to make you stop him,” Sir Lewis said. “But we also
let him teach you his abilities.”
“So I’m an experiment,” Malone said.
“A successful experiment,” Sir Lewis added.
“Well,” Malone said dully, “bully for me.”
“Don’t feel that way,” Sir Lewis said. “We have—”
He stopped suddenly, and glanced at the others. Burris and Lou stood
up, and Sir Lewis followed them.
“Sorry,” Sir Lewis said in a different tone. “There’s something
important that we must take care of. Something quite urgent, I’m
afraid.”
“You can go on home, Malone,” Burris said. “We’ll talk later, but
right now there’s a crisis coming and we’ve got to help. Leave the
car. I’ll take care of it.”
“Sure,” Malone said, without moving.
Lou said, “Ken—” and stopped. Then the three of them turned and
started up the long, curving staircase that led to the upstairs rooms.
Malone sat in the Morris chair for several long minutes, wishing that
he were dead. Nobody made a sound. He rubbed his hands over the soft
leather and tried to tell himself that he was lucky, and talented, and
successful.
But he didn’t care.
He closed his eyes at last, and took a deep breath.
Then he vanished.
16
Two hours passed, somehow. Bourbon and soda helped them pass, Malone
discovered; he drank two highballs slowly, trying not to think about
anything, and kept staring around at the walls of his apartment
without really seeing anything. He felt terrible.
He made himself a third bourbon and soda and started in on it. Maybe
this one would make him feel better. Maybe, he thought, he ought to
break out the cigars and celebrate.
But there didn’t seem to be very much to celebrate, somehow.
He felt like a guinea pig being congratulated on having successfully
resisted a germ during an experiment.
He drank some more of the bourbon and soda. Guinea pigs didn’t drink
bourbon and soda, he told himself. He was better off than a guinea
pig. He was happier than a guinea pig. But he couldn’t imagine any
guinea pig in the world, no matter how heartbroken, feeling any worse
than Kenneth J. Malone.
He looked up. There was another guinea pig in the room.
Then he frowned. She wasn’t a guinea pig. She was one off the
experimenters. She was the one the guinea pig was supposed to fall in
love with, so the guinea pig could be nice and telepathic and all the
other experimenters could congratulate themselves. But whoever heard
of a scientist falling in love with a guinea pig? It was fate. And
fate was awful. Malone had often suspected it, but now he was sure.
Now he saw things from the guinea pig’s side, and fate was terrible.
“But Ken,” the experimenter said. “It isn’t like that at all.”
“It is, too,” Malone said. “It’s even worse, but that’ll have to wait.
When I have some more to drink it will get worse. Watch and see.”
“But Ken—” Lou hesitated, and then went on. “Don’t feel sad about
being an experiment. We’re all experiments.”
“I’m the guinea pig,” Malone said. “I’m the only guinea pig. You said
so.”
“No, Ken,” she said. “Remember, all of us in the PRS got early
training when it was new and untried. Some of those methods weren’t as
good as we now have them; that’s why a man like your boss sometimes
tends to have a little trouble.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “But I’m your guinea pig. You made me dance
through hoops and do tricks and everything just for an experiment.
That’s what.” He took another swallow of his drink. “See?” he said.
“It’s getting worse already.”
“No, it’s not,” Lou said. “It’s getting better, if you’ll only listen.
I wasn’t given this job, Ken. I volunteered for it.”
“That isn’t any better,” Malone said morosely.
“I volunteered because I—because I liked you,” Lou said. “Because I
wanted to work with you, wanted to be with you.”
“It’s more experimenting,” Malone said flatly. “More guinea-pigging
around.”
“It isn’t, Ken,” Lou said. “Believe me. Look into my mind. Believe
me.”
Malone tried. A second passed....
And then a long time passed, without any words at all.
“Well, well,” Malone said at last. “If this is the life of a guinea
pig, I’m all for it.”
“I’m all for guinea pigs’ rights,” Lou said. “Life, Liberty and the
Pursuit of Me.”
“Agreed,” Malone said. “How about that crisis, by the way? Are you
going to have to leave suddenly again?”
Lou stretched lazily on the couch. “That’s all over with, thank God,”
she said. “We had to get our agent out of Miami Beach, and cover his
tracks at the same time.”
“Tricky,” Malone said.
“Very,” Lou said.
“But—” Malone blinked. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Your agent? You
mean you had Governor Flarion killed?”
Lou nodded soberly. “We had to,” she said. “That paranoid mind of his
had built up a shield we simply couldn’t get through. He had plans for
making himself president, you know—and all the terrifying
potentialities of an embryonic Hitler.” She grimaced. “We don’t like
being forced to kill,” she said, “but sometimes we’ve got to.”
Malone thought of his own .44 Magnum, and the times he had used it,
and nodded very slowly.
“There are still a couple of questions, though,” he said. “For
instance, there’s that trip to Russia. Why _did_ you make it? Was it
your father?”
“Of course it was,” Lou said. “We had to get him back in and make sure
he was safe.”
“You mean that Vasili Garbitsch is a PSR member?” Malone said,
stunned.
“Well, really,” Lou said. “Did you think my father would really be a
spy? We had to get him back to Russia; he was needed for work in the
Kremlin. That’s why we nudged Boyd into making the arrest.”
“And the others?” Malone said. “Brubitsch and Borbitsch?”
“Real spies,” Lou said. “Bad ones, but real. Any more questions?”
“Some,” Malone said. “Were you kidding about that drink in Moscow?”
She shook her head. “I wish I had been,” she said. “But I was
concentrating on Petkoff, who didn’t know a thing about the drugged
drink. I didn’t catch anything else until after I’d swallowed it. And
then it was too late.”
“Good old Petkoff,” Malone said. “Always helpful. But he was right
about one thing, anyway.”
“What?” Lou said.
“The FBI,” Malone said. “He told us it was a secret police
organization. And, by God, in a way it is!”
Lou grinned. Malone started to laugh outright. They found themselves
very close and the laughter stopped, and there was some more time
without words. When Malone broke free, he had a suddenly sobered
expression on his face.
“Hey,” he said. “What about Tom Boyd? He knows a lot but he hasn’t got
any talents, as far as I know, and—”
“He’ll be all right,” Lou said. “Andrew and the others have thought of
that.”
“But he knows an awful lot about the evidence I dug up.”
“Andrew will give him a cover-up explanation they’re working out,” Lou
said. “That will convince Boyd there’s nothing more to worry about. Of
course, we may have to change his mind about a few things, but we can
do that, probably through you, since you know him best. There’s
nothing for you to worry over, Ken. Nothing at all.”
“Good,” Malone said. He leaned over and kissed her. “Because I’m not
in the least worried.”
Lou sighed deeply, looking off into space.
“Luba Malone,” she said. “It sounds nice. And, after all, my mother
was Irish. At least it sounds better than Garbitsch.”
“What doesn’t?” Malone said automatically. Then he blinked. “Hey,
_I’m_ Malone!” he said. “How could you be Malone?”
“Me?” Lou said. She caroled happily. “I’m Malone because I love you,
love you with all my heart.”
“That,” Malone said, “does it. A woman after my own heart.”
Lou made a low curtsy.
“And a woman of grace and breeding,” Malone said. “Eftsoons, if that
means anything.”
“You know,” Lou said, “I like you even better when you’re being Sir
Kenneth. Especially when you’re talking to yourself.”
“My innate gallantry and all my good qualities come out,” Malone said.
“Yes,” Lou said. “Indeed they do. All over the place. It’s nice to go
back to Elizabethan times, anyhow, in the middle of all these
troubles.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Malone said. “There’s always been trouble. In the
Middle Ages, it was witches. In the Seventeenth Century, it was
demons. In the Nineteenth it was revolutions. In—”
Lou cut him off with a kiss. When she broke away Malone raised his
eyebrows.
“I prithee,” he said, “interrupt me not. I am developing a scheme of
philosophy. There have always been troubles. In the 1890’s there was a
Depression and panic, and the Spanish-American War—”
“All right, Sirrah,” Lou said. “And then what?”
“Let’s see,” Malone said, reverting to 1973 for a second. “In 1903
there was the airplane, and troubles abroad.”
“Yes?” Lou said. “Do go on, Sirrah. Your liege awaits your slightest
word.”
“Hmm,” Malone said.
“That, Milord, was a very slight word indeed,” Lou said. “What’s after
1903?”
Malone smiled and went back to the days of the First Elizabeth
happily.
“In 1914, it was enemy aliens,” said Sir Kenneth Malone.