Schiml grimaced. "No, not Blackie. Blackie is discreet, in her own
quiet way. She hasn't had anything to do with it. We've known about you
all along, Jeff. And through a much more reliable source than Blackie."
He glanced over his shoulder at one of the guards. "Bring him in," he
said abruptly.
The door to the adjoining room opened and a man walked into the room.
He was a tall, lean man; a gaunt-faced man with sallow cheeks and
large, sad eyes; a weary-looking man whose hair was graying about the
temples--a man whose whole body looked desperately tired.
And Schiml looked at the man and then he looked at the ceiling. "Hello,
Paul," he said softly. "There's someone here who's been looking for
you--"
A scream broke from Jeff's lips as he stared across the room. A raw
animal scream ripped from his mouth like a knife. His lips twisted and
he wrenched at the guards who were holding his arms, his face going
purple, his eyes bulging.
With a roar he lunged at Conroe, bellowing, a torrent of hatred and
abuse pouring from his lips. Again and again he screamed, his eyes
blazing with an unholy fire of hatred. Conroe jerked back with a cry,
and then Schiml was on his feet as Jeff lunged again, his muscles
tightening like bands of steel under the flimsy shirt.
The guards fought to restrain him, and then the doctor was holding him
too, crying: "Get out, Paul, quick!"
But Paul Conroe stood stock still, writhing from his hands to his head,
his eyes filling with horrible pain. Suddenly the coffee cup jerked
from the table, spun in the air and hurled straight for Conroe's head.
It missed, smashing against the wall.
Jeff screamed again and the walls and ceiling began powdering off,
plaster peeling down in great chunks, smashing off the walls onto
the floor. A huge chunk fell from the ceiling, and then the curtains
suddenly started to blaze, as if ignited by some magic fire. Finally,
Conroe's clothing began smoking and smoldering.
Blackie screamed, staring at Jeff in open horror. Schiml's voice roared
through the bedlam: "Get him! Sedate him, for God's sake, before he
tears the place down on our ears!" Again Jeff roared his virulent
hatred, and this time Conroe was the one who shouted:
"Stop him! He's tearing me apart inside. My God, stop him!"
Someone stepped between Jeff and Conroe. There was a flicker of glass
and silver as a plunger was pressed home. Then suddenly Jeff's muscles
gave out. His legs walked out from under him, and he felt himself
sliding to the floor. But still he screamed, the face of the man who
had tormented him all his life growing closer and closer, more and
more vicious. Then suddenly everything around him went black. His last
conscious impression was that of Blackie. She had her face in her hands
and she was sobbing like a child in the corner.
* * * * *
He lay on the long table, wrapped in cool green surgical linens,
motionless, barely breathing. His eyes were wide open, but sightless.
They seemed to be staring straight up at the pale, glowing skylight in
the ceiling. It was as if they were staring beyond, eons beyond, into
some strange world that no human foot had ever trod.
His breath came slowly, a harsh sound in the still room. Sometimes it
slowed almost to a stop, sometimes it accelerated. Dr. Schiml paused
motionless by his side, waiting, watching breathlessly until the ragged
wheeze slowed once again to normal.
Jeff lay like a corpse, but he was not dead. Near his head the panel of
tiny lights flickered on and off, brighter and dimmer, carrying their
simple on-or-off messages from the myriad microscopic endings on the
tiny electrode that probed through the soft brain tissue.
No human being could ever analyze the waxing and waning of patterns on
that panel, not even in five lifetimes. But a camera could film the
changes, instant upon instant, flickering and flashing and glowing
dully on and off, in a thousand thousand different figures and
movements. And the computor could take these patterns from the film
and analyze them and compare them. It would integrate them into the
constantly changing picture that appeared on the small screen by the
bedside.
It was a crude instrument, indeed, for the study of so exquisitely
delicate and variable an instrument as a human brain, and no one knew
this more painfully than Roger Schiml. But even such a crude instrument
could probe into that strange half-world that they had sought so long
to enter.
Near the bedside Paul Conroe sat motionless, his face drawn, his gaunt
cheeks sunken. His eyes were wide and fearful as he watched the picture
panel and his fingers trembled as he lit his pipe. He kept watching.
"It could be so dangerous," he murmured finally, turning to look at
Schiml. "So terribly dangerous."
Schiml nodded gravely, adjusting the microvernier that controlled the
probing instrument. "Of course it could be dangerous, but not too much
so. Twenty years ago he'd have been dead already, but we haven't been
wasting time all these years we've been waiting for him. Particularly
in this cell-probing technique, we've ironed out the bugs. He'll
survive, all right, unless we run into something mighty--"
Conroe shook his head. "Oh, no, no. I don't mean dangerous for him. I
mean dangerous for us. Even he doesn't realize his power. How can we
predict what sort of power it might be?" He looked up at Schiml, his
eyes wide. "That room--it would have been gone in another five minutes,
simply torn apart into molecular dust. He did it--and yet, I'd swear
he didn't know what he was doing. I doubt if he even realized what was
happening. And the fire--that was real fire, Roger. I know, I felt it
burn me."
Schiml nodded eagerly. "Of course it was real fire! Set molecules to
spinning at terrifically accelerated rates and you have fire. But those
are the things we have to learn, Paul."
Conroe shook his head, fearfully. "We could both see the fire, but
there was something else. You couldn't feel the hatred that was in that
room. I could." He looked up, his eyes haunted. "God, Roger, how could
a man hate that way? It was thick; it ran out into the room like syrup.
Oh, I've felt hatred before in the minds I've contacted, many times.
I've felt vile hatred before, but this was alive, crawling hate--" He
sighed, his hands trembling. "It's in his mind, Roger. We don't know
what else he might do, even under anesthetic, if we hit the right
places. But it's in his mind. That we know. But why?"
Schiml nodded again. "That's the key question, of course. Why does
he hate you so much? When we know that"--the doctor spread his
hands--"we'll have the answer to twenty years' work, perhaps. And
dangerous as it is, we've got to find out, while we have a chance,
Paul. You know that. We can't stop now, not with what we know. We know
that Jeff's insanity is far less active right now than his father's
was. But unless we can locate the areas, find the location of both
factors, the psychosis and the extra-sensory powers, we're lost. We'd
have no recourse but to turn our findings over to the authorities. And
you know what that would mean."
Conroe nodded wearily. "Yes, I know. Mass slaughter, sterilization,
fear, panic--all the wrong answers. And even the panic alone would be
fatal in our psychotic world."
Dr. Schiml shrugged and went back to the bedside. "We'll know soon, one
way or the other," he said softly. "We're coming through right now."