Four days later, he was more than tired. He was exhausted. The six
psychopaths--including Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I--had been housed in
a converted dormitory in the Westinghouse area, together with four
highly nervous and even more highly trained and investigated
psychiatrists from St. Elizabeths in Washington. The Convention of Nuts,
as Malone called it privately, was in full swing. And it was every bit
as strange as he'd thought it was going to be. Unfortunately, five of
the six--Her Majesty being the only exception--were completely out of
contact with the world. The psychiatrists referred to them in worried
tones as "unavailable for therapy," and spent most of their time
brooding over possible ways of bringing them back into the real world
for a while.
Malone stayed away from the five who were completely psychotic. The
weird babblings of fifty-year-old Barry Miles disconcerted him. They
sounded like little Charlie O'Neill's strange semi-connected jabber, but
Westinghouse's Dr. O'Connor said that it seemed to represent another
phenomenon entirely. William Logan's blank face was a memory of horror,
but the constant tinkling giggles of Ardith Parker, the studied and
concentrated way that Gordon Macklin wove meaningless patterns in the
air with his waving fingers, and the rhythmless, melodyless humming that
seemed to be all there was to the personality of Robert Cassiday were
simply too much for Malone. Taken singly, each was frightening and
remote; all together, they wove a picture of insanity that chilled him
more than he wanted to admit.
When the seventh telepath was flown in from Honolulu, Malone didn't even
bother to see her. He let the psychiatrists take over directly, and
simply avoided their sessions.
Queen Elizabeth I, on the other hand, he found genuinely likeable.
According to the psych boys, she had been--as both Malone and Her
Majesty had theorized--heavily frustrated by being the possessor of a
talent which no one else recognized. Beyond that, the impact of other
minds was disturbing; there was a slight loss of identity which seemed
to be a major factor in every case of telepathic insanity. But the Queen
had compensated for her frustrations in the easiest possible way; she
had simply traded her identity for another one, and had rationalized a
single, over-ruling delusion: that she was Queen Elizabeth I of England,
still alive and wrongfully deprived of her throne.
"It's a beautiful rationalization," one of the psychiatrists said with
more than a trace of admiration in his voice. "Complete and thoroughly
consistent. She's just traded identities--and everything else she
does--_everything_ else--stems logically out of her delusional premise.
Beautiful."
She might have been crazy, Malone realized. But she was a long way from
stupid.
The project was in full swing. The only trouble was that they were no
nearer finding the telepath than they had been three weeks before. With
five completely blank human beings to work with, and the sixth Queen
Elizabeth (Malone heard privately that the last telepath, the girl from
Honolulu, was no better than the first five; she had apparently
regressed into what one of the psychiatrists called a "non-identity
childhood syndrome." Malone didn't know what it meant, but it sounded
terrible.) Malone could see why progress was their most difficult
commodity.
Dr. Harry Gamble, the head of Project Isle, was losing poundage by the
hour with worry. And, Malone reflected, he could ill afford it.
Burris, Malone and Boyd had set themselves up in a temporary office
within the Westinghouse area. The director had left his assistant in
charge in Washington. Nothing, he said over and over again, was as
important as the spy in Project Isle.
Apparently Boyd had come to believe that, too. At any rate, though he
was still truculent, there were no more outbursts of rebellion.
* * * * *
But, on the fourth day:
"What do we do now?" Burris asked.
"Shoot ourselves," Boyd said promptly.
"Now, look here--" Malone began, but he was overruled.
"Boyd," Burris said levelly, "if I hear any more of that sort of
pessimism, you're going to be an exception to the beard rule. One more
crack out of you, and you can go out and buy yourself a razor."
Boyd put his hand over his chin protectively, and said nothing at all.
"Wait a minute," Malone said. "Aren't there any _sane_ telepaths in the
world?"
"We can't find any," Burris said. "We--"
There was a knock at the office door.
"Who's there?" Burris called.
"Dr. Gamble," said the man's surprisingly baritone voice.
Burris called: "Come in, doctor," and the door opened. Dr. Gamble's lean
face looked almost haggard.
"Mr. Burris," he said, extending his arms a trifle, "can't anything be
done?" Malone had seen Gamble speaking before, and had wondered if it
would be possible for the man to talk with his hands tied behind his
back. Apparently it wouldn't be. "We feel that we are approaching a
critical stage in Project Isle," the scientist said, enclosing one fist
within the other hand. "If anything more gets out to the Soviets, we
might as well publish our findings"--a wide, outflung gesture of both
arms--"in the newspapers."
Burris stepped back. "We're doing the best we can, Dr. Gamble," he said.
All things considered, his obvious try at radiating confidence was
nearly successful. "After all," he went on, "we know a great deal more
than we did four days ago. Miss Thompson has assured us that the spy is
right here, within the compound of Yucca Flats Labs. We've bottled
everything up in this compound, and I'm confident that no information is
at present getting through to the Soviet Government. Miss Thompson
agrees with me."
"Miss Thompson?" Gamble said, one hand at his bearded chin.
"The Queen," Burris said.
Gamble nodded and two fingers touched his forehead. "Ah," he said. "Of
course." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "But we can't keep everybody
who's here now locked up forever. Sooner or later we'll have to let
them"--his left hand described the gesture of a man tossing away a wad
of paper--"go." His hands fell to his sides. "We're lost, unless we can
find that spy."
"We'll find him," Burris said with a show of great confidence.
"But--"
"Give her time," Burris said. "Give her time. Remember her mental
condition."
Boyd looked up. "Rome," he said in an absent fashion, "wasn't built in a
daze."
Burris glared at him, but said nothing. Malone filled the conversational
hole with what he thought would be nice, and hopeful, and untrue.
"We know he's someone on the reservation, so we'll catch him
eventually," he said. "And as long as his information isn't getting into
Soviet hands, we're safe." He glanced at his wrist watch.