He wanted desperately to tell her the whole improbable story, to reveal
his fears and get the reassurance she was able to give him.
But he couldn't risk involving Kitty in any danger.
"It's nothing," he repeated. He went down the lift quickly because he
knew that if he delayed to comfort her, he would never have the courage
to go at all.
His only clear thought, as he shouldered his way into the late-afternoon
throng outside CA, had been to escape from Kitty and from the too-vivid
memory of Janice Wynn. Now that he must choose a course, he was brought
up short by the fact that, so long as he was tailed by Jaffers' men,
there was literally no place for him to go.
He could not go to his apartment because of Jaffers' surveillance. He
had no intention of meeting Janice Wynn at his Catskill cabin at 21:00.
Her obvious knowledge--and, therefore, _theirs_--of the location ruled
that out as a refuge.
He looked about for the inevitable man in gray and found him following
at his careful hundred feet. The crowd caught and bore them both along
like chips in a millrace, keeping the interval constant.
Alcorn let himself be carried along, feeling the slow release of tension
that spread outward from him through the throng. The physical pressure
was also eased. People slowed their dogged pace and smiled at utter
strangers.
He had wondered often how the people affected by his circle of calm
accounted for their sudden change of mood. He had dreamed that one day
he might walk in such a crowd and enter another island of serenity like
his own and thus find another human being gifted like himself. Someone
with his own needs and longings, who would not melt into ready
complaisance when he drew near, but who would speak honestly and
clearly, who would understand how he felt and why.
Ironically, when that moment had come in O'Donnell's office, it hadn't
brought him the fulfillment he had expected. It had left, instead, a
panic beyond belief.
Why? What was he afraid of?
There was nothing evil or dangerous in his own gift--why should he fear
another possessing the same wild talent? Damn it, he thought, what sort
of fate could be so terrible that its foreshadowing alone could throw
him into such an anxious state?
How could he be sure that the faceless people were hostile? If they were
like Janice Wynn, and if Janice were like himself, it might follow
naturally that--
The rustle of the envelope in his pocket was like an answer, proving
that his problem, if nothing else, was real.
"... for the rest of your _very_ short life," she had said.
* * * * *
The sudden sharpening of awareness that preceded a new seizure rasped
him again. He felt the tranquillity about him, and then the arctic
montage swallowed it all, and once again he stood bodiless on the
snow-packed streets of the metal village.
The faceless people moved purposefully now, and beyond them loomed the
towering bulk of scaffolding erected about the pit where the great
bronze cylinder of a ship lay....
Pit?
Scaffolding?
Ship?
He stopped so abruptly that a man behind him stumbled and regained
balance only by clutching Alcorn's shoulder.
"Sorry," the man murmured, and moved on.
The mirage vanished; the crowd behind pushed on, parting politely about
Alcorn. The mass farther back surged restlessly, hurrying, grumbling
like an impatient corporate organism. The Jaffers agent, caught in the
press, was borne helplessly nearer.
Alcorn realized his opportunity and stood fast, waiting while the tide
of bodies flowed past. The man in gray saw his intention and struggled
frantically to break free of the pinioning crowd.
He failed.
A sort of grim satisfaction fell upon Alcorn when the man's face lost
its urgency and settled into smiling unconcern. The gift _was_ a weapon
of sorts. The way to escape--at least from Jaffers' surveillance--was
open.
He fell in beside the spy, paying less attention now to the man himself
than to the matter of disposing of him. The garish facade of a nearby
joy-bar solved his problem.
"Come with me," Alcorn ordered.
* * * * *
The joy-bar was less than half full at this early hour, but noisy enough
for midnight. A concealed battery of robotics ground out a brassy blare
of music, integrating random pitches--selected by electronic
servo-computers--into the jarring minor cacophony that had become the
latest rage.
The early patrons were intently watching the long telescreen above the
bar when Alcorn came in. A quarterstaff bout--a frantic, bloody sport
revived from God only knew how many centuries before--was in progress
there, matching a heavily muscled Nordic with a sandy bristle of hair
against a swarthy, hairless Eurasian. The Nordic, from his twisted
stance, had a couple of broken ribs already; the Eurasian's right ear
dangled redly.
Alcorn seated himself opposite Jaffers' operative in an isolated booth
and fed the coin-slot for drinks.
"Drink," he said grimly. "You're going to be drunker, my friend, than
you've ever been in your inquisitive life."
The uproar died out before the drinks arrived. Only the blaring music
machines and the blood-roar of the telescreen remained, and a suddenly
placid bartender turned both down to a murmur.
The rest was routine to Philip Alcorn's experience. Men at the bar
turned to each other like old friends, forgetting submerged frustrations
as readily as they forgot the vicious slash-and-parry on the screen. The
place drowsed in a slow and comfortable silence.
The Jaffers man tossed off his drink and dialed another. Alcorn, raising
his own, remembered Janice Wynn's letter in his pocket and set the glass
down, untasted.
The clippings, she had said, would give him an idea of what he was up
against.
His hands shook so violently when he ripped open the envelope that he
almost dropped it.
* * * * *
Eight clippings were inside, small teleprinted scissorings from digest
newssheets that were available at any street-corner dispenser. He read
them quickly, and was more puzzled than before until he realized that
they fell into two general groups of interlocking similarities.
Four were accounts of unexplained disappearances. A moderately
successful research chemist named Ellis had vanished from the offices of
his New York chemical firm; a neighborhood pharmacist in Minneapolis, a
spinster tea-shop proprietress in Atlanta and a female social worker in
Los Angeles had disappeared with equal thoroughness, completely baffling
the efforts of police to find them.
None of these people had been of more than minor importance, even in his
own immediate circle. Alcorn felt that these events had been reported
only because the efficiency of missing-persons bureaus made permanent
disappearance next to impossible. Even so, only one clipping--that on
Ellis, the New York chemist--bothered to run a photograph.
The other four accounts dealt with violent deaths, all rising from
sudden outbreaks of mob hysteria. Two of the victims had been small-town
clergymen, a profession which made their lynchings as startling as they
were inexplicable; both had been respected members of their little
communities until the day--the date was less than a week old--their
congregations rose up en masse and tore them limb from limb.
The remaining two of the second group had died in different fashions. A
doctor in a Nevada mining hamlet, making a late call, had been set upon
by the patient's family, knocked unconscious and shot. A Girl Scout
leader in Mississippi had been thrown over a cliff by her young charges.
* * * * *
A morbid and pointless collection of horrors, Alcorn thought, until he
saw the parallel that related them.
The circumstances were strikingly similar in every case except that the
four who disappeared were urbanites, while the murdered ones were all
members of small and comparatively isolated communities. Not one of the
eight had been over thirty-five; each had been well-liked; none was
wealthy, yet all were in comfortable circumstances from vocations that
depended upon good will.
A further similarity built up in Alcorn's subconscious, but died
unconsidered because at that moment the quarterstaff bout on the screen
ended and a brazen-voiced announcer gave the time.
It was 18:30. Dr. Hagen was to call him at his apartment at 19:00.
Alcorn, mulling over the cryptic half-knowledge gained from the
clippings, wondered what the little psychiatrist might make of it. Hagen
was capable in his field; even with so little to work on, he might
possibly come up with the right answer.
Alcorn decided that he could not run from a danger until he knew what
the hazard was. He might as well face the issue squarely now and be done
with it.
The Jaffers operative, on his ninth drink, had relaxed into a smiling
stupor. Alcorn left him snoring in the booth and headed for the public
radophone unit beyond the end of the bar. He could not be in his
apartment to take Dr. Hagen's call, but he could anticipate it.
The telescreen announcer's voice stopped him short. "_Have you seen this
man? Sought by police for the murder earlier this evening of Dr. Bernard
Hagen, prominent psychiatrist, he is thought to be at large somewhere in
downtown...._"
The screen showed an enlarged full-face photograph of Alcorn.
* * * * *
He was responsible for Hagen's death. But who had wanted the knowledge
of Alcorn's gift--or the suppression of that knowledge--badly enough to
kill the psychiatrist for it?
Jaffers, or the faceless people behind Janice Wynn?
It had to be Jaffers, he decided, eliminating a possible source of
opposition and at the same stroke placing himself still further on the
defensive.
Slowly, he became aware that the joy-bar had fallen quiet, that everyone
in the place was watching him with a sort of intent sympathy. The
bartender left his place and came toward him, his heavy face a study in
concern.
"We know you couldn't have done it," the man said. The sway of Alcorn's
presence held him hypnotized. "Can we help?"