"One thing," said Chester. "You say Minnn might kill. Any special way
he'd go about it?"
"How should I know?" asked Monnn. "Minnn is an outlaw, under pursuit
and away from his planet. On our planet there are no killings." And he
hung up....
* * * * *
The Perfesser, umbrella under his arm, black serge suit dusty, walked
down a long alley and into Steve's Beer Bar. Beer, he always figured,
was a real help when you were perplexed.
Minnn witnessed this logic with disgust. The Perfesser's memory-units
showed the beer just made him more perplexed. But Minnn was resting in
witness-state, very tired from making the Perfesser do all that running.
The Perfesser hooked his umbrella over the bar and was waited upon by
Steve himself. "You look kinda bushed," said Steve respectfully.
"A man my age must watch himself, Steve. Especially when he is
enervated by the hardihoods of lifetime scholarship."
"Rough," said Steve admiringly. He didn't know what the language meant
but it sounded gorgeous.
The Perfesser turned to a pushed-down man beside him at the bar. "You
would hardly believe, friend, what has just happened to me. One moment
I was watching a home-visor-view--and the next I was standing in the
street. I can scarcely credit this phenomenon."
"Funny things happen," said the pushed-down man. "I drive a laundry
truck, and one stop is out to the national asylum. They got people out
there what don't know where they even came from, too."
"You sure this really happened, Perfesser?" said Steve. "I mean--you
wouldn't make it up or nothing." The Perfesser had drunk only one "fish
bowl" of beer--it was a little early for his star-spangled lying.
"I can aver it happened," said the Perfesser stiffly. "A phenomena of
psychic rarity--similar things have occurred to intellectual persons at
various points in history."
Minnn was not enjoying himself. Humans were fun when they were having
fun, but other moods were unendurable. Coupled with illogic it was
worse. Minnn was considering shifting to the truck driver when the man
suddenly arose. "Well, night, Steve, Perfesser--I gotta get the sheets
a-rolling," said the man, and vanished out the back door.
It was seconds later that two policemen burst in the front door
and headed straight for the Perfesser. Minnn acted instantly. The
Perfesser's awareness was clamped out and the creaking frame was sent
speeding to the back door.
Down the alley the laundry truck was starting, and the Perfesser's
voice sailed after it, "Wait, fellow. Hold on!"
The truck slowed and the wizened face of the driver peered back just in
time to see the police burst into the alley and open fire. The face was
withdrawn instantly and the truck gained speed.
The Perfesser ran after it, shouting until his breath gave out. There
was junk in the alley and it was crisscrossed by other alleys with
traffic on them and the driver dared not approach top speed. The cops
shot twice again at the Perfesser, who was running like an antelope.
Minnn felt a crash in the Perfesser's shoulder and the tall body
swayed. A bit of lead had entered the clavicle. Minnn strained and
the ends of the veins constricted, slowing the loss of blood. The
Perfesser's heart and lungs were behaving alarmingly but Minnn kept the
body running. He was gaining on the truck.
The truck gained speed and so did the Perfesser. Ancient arteries,
brittled with deposits, strained and began to give. The Perfesser's
arm raised as he drew alongside the truck. The umbrella-tip neared the
driver.
* * * * *
A bullet grazed the Perfesser's side--Minnn suddenly realized they were
not shooting to kill: and also the shaky frame he had taken would not
be able to run much longer. With a surge of concentration he pushed the
body forward. The umbrella-tip touched the driver, Minnn drove himself
down the metal ferrule, somewhere an artery burst, and the body of the
Perfesser sagged, wobbled, and, still carried forward by momentum,
smashed into a wall and toppled over. It lay there on its back. Being
front-man for a Ravian had been Perfesser Frye's last falsehood.
The truck got out of the alley, going fast, and kept going fast until
it came to the asylum. The driver did not go to the back door--there
might be people waiting for him. He walked in the front door, up to the
receptionist, and touched her. Then he discovered himself standing
there, and walked embarrassedly out again.
The receptionist remained at her desk. A visitor was moving toward her;
as he passed, the receptionist touched his hand.
Down a hallway opening into the reception room came a little group of
men--three attendants from the hospital and the hospital director; a
talking-attendant and Chester Forge, and the truck driver. All were
gloved and clad in mento-insulation but the talking-attendant.
"I was standing right here," said the driver excitedly. "Right here in
front of this desk."
The talking-attendant rested his hand on the receptionist's forehead.
"Not there now," he declared.
"Have any of you seen anyone near this desk?" called the director to
the room at large. A woman pointed to the visitor the receptionist had
touched. "He was!"
The visitor began to run.
"We've got to get him before he gets into a patient!" yelled Chester.
"In an unbalanced mind even Monnn can't find him! Get him."
They went plunging after the visitor.
Minnn was pleased. He had a head start, and this human had good running
potential. He would have fun. An interne stepped out of a door, the
visitor touched his hand, the interne stepped back through the door,
rapidly. The searchers swirled down the hall and grabbed the visitor
and Monnn made his test. "Not here now," he reported.
The interne strolled into an elevator, went up a story, walked quietly
down another corridor. Excitement was percolating through the place
almost as though the inmates breathed it. There were many inmates on
this floor; he could force into one almost at leisure.
Another elevator jarred to a stop, doors opened, and the searchers
bolted out. Chester's face was like a purple plum, his eyes were red
and wild. The long chase was teasingly close to ending, and could be
frustrated forever.
The interne turned and thumbed his nose at Forge, who gave a bellow
of anger. As the men surged toward him, the attendant sprinted a few
yards, reached out and touched a patient. The halls were full of them;
attracted by the excitement. Unobtrusively the patient touched another,
who in turn touched another, who disappeared in the crowd.
"Go back to your rooms," shouted the director of the hospital. "You are
impeding a hunt for a fugitive."
But the patients didn't see any fugitive, and they stayed, and more
kept coming.
There was a disconcerting blur of thought-emotion in the patient Minnn
was using. The pursuers were the length of the hall away; he caused his
host to turn, shriek a bad word, and thumb her nose at them.
They came running, impeded by the crowd. The patient turned a corner,
touched another patient, who touched another.
It was quite an experience, Minnn decided. He had whirled through a
rich kaleidoscope of minds and emotions; in one woman there had been a
fountain of ecstacy he would have to go back and sample sometime. He
had come to the perfect place. Except as he chose to do it, to tease,
these inmates could not reveal him, and no Ravian could detect him. He
could stay here an indefinite length of time--wait them out--then go
back to the toy chest where his husk lay--or trace Sally Odum's memory
for it in case she had moved it--and repossess himself.
He could learn to live on this planet--perhaps he could even get
governmental sanctuary, though that was not essential. He would not be
lonely. Ravians do not get lonely. They do, however, have a sense of
power.
But the pursuers were coming down the hall, the Ravian in the
talking-attendant attempting to sort through the twisted minds, the
person from the tourist service almost out of his own mind. And though
Minnn was having sport, he was a little tired. He turned the eyes of
his host toward the group of hunters, and saw that they had stopped
coming and stood talking. He walked his host to a window-bench, sat it
down, turned its mind toward slumber, and relaxed.
* * * * *
Chester had to have a plan, and, driven to unwonted efficiency by the
threat of bureaucratic disgrace and exile, his mind began to form one.
The plan was not without its dangers, especially to Chester, but it was
the only plan they had.
Power was shut off to all elevators, and at the flip of a switch all
the doors on the group's floor were locked. "We've got him penned on
this floor," said Chester. "I only hope he doesn't come across a mouse."
"He's probably on this floor," corrected Monnn through the
talking-attendant. "And he'll _probably_ stay. Ravians have a slight
psionic control, as you know, and it's barely possible Minnn could
force himself through a door-panel."
"How about a wall?"
"I doubt it."
"What if there was nobody on the other side for him to force into?"
"He would not last very long ... we would lose him. And that would go
hard for you, Mr. Forge, because we do not want Minnn done away with,
we want him captured."
"I don't need to be reminded," said Chester, mentally getting a
two-handed hold on the always-be-polite-to-a-tourist rule. "And now
let's smoke him out."
The director and a helper lingered unobtrusively near a firehose;
the rest of the group strolled on down the hall. Minnn had rested
and was alert again. Through his host-eyes he saw there were many
patients milling about--there were so many ready refuges. It occurred
to him that he had not particularly bedeviled his countryman, and he
caused his host to pick up a vase and hurl it at the head of Monnn's
talking-attendant.
Almost instantly a blast of chill water struck Minnn's host, knocking
her sprawling. Minnn found her emotions most unpleasant. He took her
mind fully, forcing her up from the floor, and a ram of water pounded
her down again. Somebody was rounding up the other patients, pushing
them out of his reach. People were yelling, running.
Somebody down the hall aimed a wide-nozzled gun at Minnn's host. There
was also the blat of an explosion and something hit his host in the
chest. "What poor weapons," thought Minnn, and then the thing exploded.
A thick gas swaddled the host-patient, Minnn felt the body sagging.
There was no time for him to weigh all factors for a really logical
decision, and he made a snap-judgment to leave this body before it lost
consciousness and sealed off his contact with his environment.
A form was stumbling past, and Minnn reached his host's hand up and
touched it. In a flash he had entered. Almost instantaneously he
realized that this time it was different. The nervous system was alive
with wild, determined resistance.
His host was Chester Forge.
Chester reeled back from the gas-shrouded, drowsing inmate. The gas
would stay near her, held by the biostatic charge in all its particles.
He had to keep away from it; he needed all his consciousness for his
battle.
He would never be able to quite describe many of the things he felt
during the struggle he waged within his own organism like a civil war.
Minnn had entered at his right wrist. Although Chester had mentally
braced, the alien had surged up his arm almost instantaneously, nearly
to the shoulder. Chester called on his mind to hold Minnn there. He
worked some part of his mind to hold Minnn there. He worked some part
of his mind like a new muscle--one cannot explain how it is he works a
muscle, he just does it. Simultaneously Chester reeled down the hall
toward where Monnn, in the talking-attendant, stood by an open door.
Monnn and the door were his two aces in the hole.
His flesh crawled; the alien was digging, seeping, sparking through
him, along his nerves, like a fluid, a worm, a gas, an insidious
writhing electricity. And the alien was winning. Inexorably he drove
along the stubborn channels to the seat of control, the watchroom in
the skull.
The talking-attendant stood with a rustling, limp black sac
out-held--Minnn's husk, taken from the toy chest of Sally Odum. If
Chester could force the writhing Minnn back down and out of his
fingertips and into the husk....
But he couldn't. The sweat rolled down his face as the fight went on
inside him. He had no way of knowing what would happen when Minnn, who
was nearing it, reached his brain. Insanity? Convulsions? Death? At
the very least, Minnn would control him, and also know his thoughts,
his plan, his two aces in the hole.
* * * * *
There was a twist and a tingle at the base of his skull--the invader
was entering his brainstalk. It was time to play his first ace. With a
burst of determination to control his reeling motor functions, Chester
reached out his hand and touched the hand of the talking-attendant.
Monnn swished vengefully inside him.
When they had discussed this the others had been afraid. So had
Chester. Two alien forces, one hostile, both struggling, might rip
and rupture his psychic system like lightning bolts battling inside
a transistor. But Chester Forge was a stubborn man, with perhaps a
bureaucratic stubbornness, certainly a human stubbornness, and he was
committed to an end to be achieved.
For a few split seconds there was in Chester's nervous system what
might be described as a "hush." He took advantage of it to step through
the open door into a dimly-lighted room. The hospital director,
insulation-swathed, followed with the leather-rustling husk.
Then Minnn and Monnn locked forces, and Chester reeled with the shock
and swirl of the combat. The two forces mixed, fused, separated,
mingled, yet Chester somehow knew always which was which, got bursts
of the reasoning of each, knew in some indescribable way the alien,
indecipherable natures of each of them. For an instant he panicked.
Something mysterious and terrible as the dark energy of infinity was
pounding and flashing in his merely human synapses and cells, something
he understood yet could not understand at all.
He felt a draining, and knew Minnn was tapping him for energy. Chester
rallied to help Monnn. He pulled his energy, his thoughts, away from
Minnn, rolling up, balling, clenching his powers, keeping them out of
reach, probing for a chance to strike. Minnn filamented through half
his body; part of the alien was needling and darting into Chester's
mind, burrowing toward knowledge of his plan. Chester buried his plan
in the very center of the ball of thoughts, hiding his last ace.
He could not keep this up much longer, and he could feel that both
Minnn and Monnn knew this. It was time for the big assault. He sent
flash after flash of willpower crisping through his nerves, and Monnn
interwove himself in these assaults. Minnn was being forced back, and
back, intolerably pressured.
Minnn hurled his energies at them in a sudden rush, and Chester felt
something in him begin to tear like a piece of silk.
Concealed from Minnn like the kernel of a nut, Chester cupped the
knowledge, his last ace. He was at the verge of cracking, now was the
time to play it. He edged toward the wall of the room, where a patient
sat darkly on a bench. At the same time both he and Monnn drove forth
their last few ergs of pressure against Minnn.
Chester felt something raise his arm. His arm moved toward the patient;
his palm touched the man's cheek. There was a sudden cleanness in him,
and Minnn was gone.
He leaped backward through the door and it swung to and locked. A
peep-panel was opened in it and the black fringed husk hung up before
the opening. Chester touched the talking-attendant so Monnn could pass
over, then leaned weakly against the wall opposite the door.
"I give him half an hour," he said. "Who's got a drink of water?"
It turned out that they had waited only twenty-two minutes when the
fringed sac began to take a luster, to puff and to fill. When they were
quite sure Minnn was entirely within it, they wrapped it tightly in
the insulation and took it away.
"It was a good plan," said Monnn through the talking-attendant as
they drove back toward the town. "We could never have forced him to
leave you to enter his husk--his logic would have driven him to fight
even harder and to stay, with rather unfortunate results to you, Mr.
Forge, but under pressure he would leave to enter another host. And
it was lucky the walls of that room held him--as you said, that was a
gamble we had to take. But I wish you would again describe to me the
phenomenon in that room. It sounds quite strange."
"It's something that happens to humans," said Chester, "and I knew no
Ravian could put up with it. Illogic disturbs you, and you tour in
human beings only for the sake of one kind of emotion, the pleasant
kind. In that room there was no logic, and the emotions were of a
different kind, a kind you haven't heard of. The humans there were in
what is called a depressive ward. They are illogically unhappy, all the
time."
"I see," said Monnn through the lips of the attendant. "You have good
logic, Mr. Forge. I have a new respect for human logic. Yes."