Alien Minds (10 page)

"How did you ever happen to think of them?" Yandor had asked when Hanlon first spoke of them and showed the impresario what he had made.

Hanlon shrugged. "I always feel cheated because I can't see better when I go to a performance," he said. "When I got to thinking of my act, I knew it wouldn't show up well if people couldn't see clearly exactly what my roches were doing. So I figured out these lights. Don't you like the idea?"

"Well now, yes, I like them. But I don't know. People are peculiar about change. They may do something about it if they don't approve of them."

"Well," Hanlon made a nonchalant gesture, "we can always turn 'em off if they yell."

But after the first few moments, when the customers had seen how much better they could watch the posturer who came on first, the value of the footlights was clearly seen, and they gave their whole-hearted approval. A new custom was born on Estrella.

Hanlon had been below in the cubicle assigned him and his roches, so had not seen nor heard the crowd's reactions to the acts that preceded him. When it came his turn to go on, he was glad to find that his nervousness was gone, and that he was perfectly calm.

Yandor stopped him near the bead of the stairway leading up from underground, while the native who was manager and a sort of master or announcer of acts, made a brief speech.

"Nyers and nyas and you, most gracious k'nyer," he addressed the throng and the Ruler, "tonight you are to see something most unusual in trained animals. I have been connected with performances for many, many years, but never have I seen anything to equal this. I will not attempt to tell you what is coming—you must see and marvel and judge for yourselves. Next on our program is Gor Anlo and his Friends."

Hanlon came up the stairway and onto the stage, followed in single line by his eight roches. There was a titter of laughter at first sight of Hanlon in the roch-mask and the dogs in their gaudy uniforms, but this soon quieted in amazed surprise at the exhibition they were witnessing.

Across the entire stage-place the roches marched, while Hanlon took his place in the center. He did not utter aloud a single word of command as the eight roches marched about the platform and stopped in a circle facing the audience on all sides, all the dogs equidistant from the others. As one they rose on their hind legs, and their forepaws bent to their heads in a salute.

A moment they held this, then still without a spoken word of command, dropped to all fours and in rapid succession formed and marched in company front and lines of two and four, made left and right turns, marched across the stage in oblique lines, did about face and to the rear, and all the complicated maneuvers the Ruler's residence guards did on the parade ground.

Then they added some things Hanlon had never seen Estrellan guards do, but which were more or less common to Terran drill teams. They did full wheels in lines of eight and four, formed wheeling stars and circles.

Never once did Hanlon utter a word of command that anyone could hear; never once did the roches falter or break that perfectly-cadenced step; never once was one of them out of line. There was never any hesitation, never any breaking of ranks even when, about half-way through their drill they changed to quick time—almost double the cadence in which they had first drilled.

How could any of that great, stunned audience guess that the trainer was actually controlling each animal mind, that his own mind was divided and parts of it superimposed on each animal brain, so that it was impossible for them to act counter to his central—yet individual—command?

All the audience could see was the most perfect, the most incredibly flawless precision of training they had ever witnessed. Led by the Ruler they began a rhythmic chant of "Yi, yi, yi, yi," in cadence with the roch's marching tempo. The chant grew louder by the moment until it was a deafening roar.

At their first sounds Hanlon almost lost his poise—for he did not know that this was their method of giving highest applause—and that very few acts ever received it at all. He had never heard it when he had attended their performances before. To him, now, it sounded more like they were giving him earthly "boos", and he was afraid he had somehow offended them.

He withdrew part of his mind from each of the roches, even as they were marching across the stage, and sent it out to contact the mind of the Ruler and several others. He was pleasantly surprised at what he read there, for it was not dissatisfaction, but a combined wonder and delight at what they were seeing.

Quickly he again sent full measure of his mind into each of his roches to continue the drill—nor had anyone noticed any break in their routine during the second or so of this mind-searching.

Finally, after a full five minutes of this, Hanlon silently commanded each one, in unison, "Company, halt. Right, dress. Parade, rest. Salute."

He himself came to a stiff salute, his directed at the Ruler. Higher and still louder grew the chanted roar. Even the Ruler sprang to his feet, his sounds of approval nearly as loud and unrestrained as the rest.

When the noise subsided a bit, Hanlon gave the roches "At rest," and they relaxed, lay down, and panted . . . but each still in his place.

Hanlon stepped forward and facing first one way and then the other said, "Thank you for your kind reception of our poor efforts. Now, with your permission, I would like to show you some of the individual abilities of my little friends."

But while he was speaking four of the animals had gone off to the side near the entrance to the stairway. Hanlon had fixed up a specially prepared chair. To the bottoms of each of the legs he had affixed light wooden rods that extended out several inches. Now the four roches each picked up a rod in its teeth and thus lifted the stool, which they brought out and set before Hanlon. He looked down at them in pretended surprise, then out at his audience, and smiled. "My friends are so thoughtful. They must think I am tired and need a rest. Well, far be it from me to disappoint them." And he sat down, while the roches went back to their places and lay down.

Instantly there was a loud, angry hissing from the audience. There was no mistaking this—it was censure, not praise. Hanlon was dumb-founded. What had he done wrong?

Quickly he scanned a number of minds, and found he had broken one of their most sacred taboos. Nobody—but
nobody
—ever
sat in the presence of their beloved Ruler without his express invitation.

"Oops, tilted!" Hanlon groaned, quickly rising and shoving the offending stool off the edge of the stage. But the audience was not mollified. If anything, their clamor rose louder.

It was the Ruler, himself, who quieted them. He rose and held up his hand in a gesture of silence, smiling forgivingly.

"Boy, what a swell egg he is," Hanlon mentally wiped the sweat from his mind's brow. "I still don't understand these folks. I'll have to watch myself more carefully, all the time."

He bowed his thanks to the Ruler, spreading his hands in a gesture of apology. Then he quickly made the roches begin their other tricks. He had one do some acrobatics, in imitation of the type their native acrobats did. Two of the others "danced" together. Another balanced himself and rolled about the stage on a large plastic ball Hanlon had secured. Three of them did intricate circlings about each other, without ever getting in each other's way or breaking step at any time. Another stood on its bind legs and "sang" in imitation of the singers. Another "walked" on its front legs. These, being more to the liking of his audience, yet something they had never seen animals do, or so well, soon recaptured their interest. After a bit they began again that "Yi, yi" of applause. By the time Hanlon's turn was over the people seemed to have forgotten his one blooper, and were solidly "with him." As he left the stage and went below with his roches, their yells were the loudest yet.

Ino Yandor was wildly enthusiastic, and those who had seen the first night's performance spread the word. In days the fame of Hanlon and his roches had spanned the continent, and other cities were clamoring to see his act, while the National Theatre there in Stearra was packed nightly with capacity crowds.

During those days Hanlon spent as much of his time as he could wandering about the city, the marketplace, the recreation parks, and sitting in various places where people ate or drank. With his mind he was hunting not only for whatever points of specific information he might glean, but also to get a more general and better "feel" of the people and conditions here.

He was confirmed in his early beliefs that as a whole these were wonderful people; that they would make excellent citizens of the Federation. They had such a high sense of social justice; such deep feelings of right and wrong; such splendid habits of co-operative living. More even than the Terrans and the colonists, who had come far along the road of brotherliness in the past centuries, these Estrellans had an innate belief in the brotherhood of man.

What a great gap there was between the great mass of Estrellans and those few criminals with whom he was working? He remembered one time when he had been talking with his father about the way he worked.

"You want to be mighty careful," Admiral Newton warned. "Being around gangsters and criminals so much, you'll have to watch not to begin thinking like they do."

"You never need worry about that, dad," Hanlon had been very earnest. "The more I see of 'em, the less I like 'em, and the more I'm sure the common decencies of life are best. We must have law, government and order, and all decent citizens must always 'live and let live'. I could never be contented otherwise."

CHAPTER 8

THE NIGHT THE SNEAK BOAT WAS DUE TO return, Hanlon early sent word to Yandor that he was ill, and could not perform that night. The entrepreneur came, boiling over with anger, to Hanlon's rooms.

"Well now," he began, "what's all this about . . .?"

"Ooh, quiet, please," Hanlon moaned. He had been ready for just some such thing, and was lying in bed, face contorted with pain, and now pressed his hands to his ears as though Yandor's loud voice was more than he could stand. "Can't you see I'm sick? Why must you make so much noise?"

The agent was taken aback by this counterthrust. He calmed a bit then, but asked many questions. Hanlon's partial answers and evident pain finally convinced the impresario that his star performer was, indeed, too ill to appear.

"These attacks come only once or twice a year, and usually last only a day or two," Hanlon assured him in a weak voice. "I'll try my best to be on hand tomorrow."

"Very well, I'll expect you then. Well now, there is something I've been meaning to talk to you about, and now is a good time. I want you to work into your act various things to say against the Terrans; about how such wonderful performances as yours would be impossible if we were to submit to them and accept their so-called invitation to join their Federation. Suggest to the audience that we would all become slaves, and that neither would performers have time to prepare their acts, nor would the others be allowed to come and watch them."

Hanlon was slightly prepared for this because he had seen it forming in Yandor's mind, but he did not like it any the better. He was just about to make an angry retort when he took himself in hand, and continued keeping in the character he had assumed. He groaned a bit louder, and twisted more violently on the bed.

"Please, nyer, leave me now. I hate for anyone to see me while I'm like this. As for what you've just said, we'll talk about it later and see what can be worked out."

And, reluctantly, it seemed, Yandor finally left.

When night at last brought its cloak of darkness, Hanlon put the roches to sleep and slipped quietly from his room. Down in the back, though, he could not seem to get his tricky acetylene-powered engine to start. He fussed and tinkered for nearly two hours before he could finally get it going.

"So help me, I'm never going to cuss out a real ground-car after this because it acts up occasionally," he said as he rode out of the yard and down the dusty street. He drove as fast as he could out to the clearing where the sneakboat had already landed.

"Sorry to be late, fellows," he said as soon as he had given the password and been allowed aboard. Ile accepted gratefully the cup of coffee they gave him, and griped for five solid minutes about those gosh-awful excuses for transportation these so-and-so natives used.

"Here, have a box of candy bars, and quit belly-aching," one of them said at last. The other held out another gift, a pound can of pulverized instant coffee.

"Hey, these are wonderful," Hanlon's spirits rose as if by magic. "You guys are my friends for life."

"Why, Georgie," one of them simpered. "I didn't know you cared."

"You'll have to choose between us, though," the other said owlishly. "I'm not going to be a partner to bigamy."

Then they both laughed. "Look, he's blushing."

"Aw, I am not," Hanlon spluttered. "It's just this pink skin-dye," he added weakly.

"Anyway, here's your cat," the SS men got down to business, and fetched the crate containing the beautiful animal. "We happened to remember hearing that these people don't have milk, so we got you one that's accustomed to a meat and vegetable diet."

"Gee, thanks for that. I'd completely forgotten that point."

Hanlon examined the big, black cat, and his mind reached out and quieted its fright at the strange surroundings and this hairy being who was now handling it.

He talked with the men for some further time, told them he had not yet got any sure clues, but was beginning to get an "in" with some people he felt sure would lead him to some. They told him the other three men had reported about the same, although Hooper said the curve was rising steadily on the belief that Terrans were behind the crime wave here.

"Yeh, I've heard that bilge, too. It's just another of the things we'll have to stamp out before we can win out here. But we will."

"Sure you will," the two agreed. "Anything else you need?"