Bright Segment (25 page)

“You really think I’ve got a high-powered psychic hiding around here who does the work after I get to it with the finder?”

“
You’re
the TK!”

She slumped resignedly at the controls. “If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. Old Roman saying. If that’s what you say it is, boy, then that’s what it is.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” he grumbled, looking at his watch. “So now what do we do?”

“Wait a minute—I’ve got to get used to something.” She hung over the console and then glanced up brightly. “I’ll break out the pilot model. You can’t tote this thing under your arm.”

She went to a storage wall and dragged out a bin. In it was a long box. Roan helped her open it and lift out the spindly collection of coils and bars, setting it on a bench.

“I’ll check you through this.” She flung off her wrapper and advanced on the machine. “Just turn it on its side for me,” she said. “what are you gawping at? Oh!” She looked down at her shorts and halter, and laughed. “I
told
you it was too hot in here.”

It was not that age had left no marks on her compact body, but certainly not two centuries’ worth. Holding a light-duty soldering iron near her cheek, she slapped herself on the bare midriff.

“One thing you might keep in mind about women as you get to
know ’em, Roany—the parts that the decent people expose are exactly the ones that get old first. This face of mine was gone at 75, but the tummy’s good for another hundred yet.” She bent over the device. “Maybe it’s better that way, maybe not—who’s to say? Hand me the millivoltmeter there.”

After a time, her work with the machine took precedence over everything else in Roan’s cosmos. “You sure can get around in there,” he said, awed, as he held the light for her.

“Think so?” she grunted, and went on working steadily.

VIII

At 1451, Roan Walsh arrived at the Walsh Building. His head spun with its lopsided weight of advice, technical data and strategy. His arrival was in the warehouse, not in the office, for he brought a long wooden box on casters. He pushed the box himself up the long corridor to the office wing.

“Oh, Roan Walsh, can I help?”

“No, Corsonmay. Wait—Yes, come in.” He put his hands on the end of the box and nodded at the dithering secretary. “Grab hold here.”

She came close, tittered and let the tips of her gloves show for an instant before she slipped them clumsily under the end of the box.

Not that end up, you addlehead
.

Roan yelped and let go. Corsonmay, now bearing most of the not inconsiderable weight, began to mew rapidly. Roan, sitting flat on the floor, gasped, “Who said that?”

“Ewp!”
squeaked Corsonmay. “It’s heavy!”

“Let it down. My God, Corsonmay, you’re as strong as a horse!”

“That’s the nicest thing you ever said to me,” she beamed without sarcasm.

He turned to her, found himself face to face with her withered ardency. “What did you say about lifting up the wrong end, Corsonmay?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

I did
.

“Byemay,” he said, and forestalling her, added, “Really—nothing
more. Byemay.”

She left and he whirled, hunting futilely in midair. “Granny! Where are you?”

Briefly, just at eye-level, the business end of a needle-focus audio beam projector appeared. Roan patted it happily and it disappeared. Bless her, she’d be watching everything through her big machine, her audio aimed for his inner ear every second.

At 1559.5, the ceiling said, “Roan Walsh, you may step in now.”

“Coming, Private.” He all but started at the sound of his own voice. How was it that, though he seemed increasingly able to cope with anyone or anything, his father’s voice still turned him to mush?

But that could wait. He stepped just inside the room.

“Come, come—stand close. I intend to do one of several things, but biting is not one of them.”

Roan stayed where he was. “May I have the Private’s permission to bring a piece of equipment in?”

“You have my permission to bring those cards in, revised or not. Nothing more.”

“The Private deprives me of the use of evidence he himself assigned me to bring,” Roan said stiffly.

“Do I now?” The beard, its lower end invisible under the privacy hood, was pulled thoughtfully. “Very well. But I should warn you—you have no leeway, young man. None!”

Roan wheeled the box through the doorway. He was shaking with apprehension, but Granny’s voice pleaded inaudibly,
Trust me
.

Even in front of his father, he nearly smiled. He locked the casters and, with a tremendous effort, heaved the box up on end. The right end, this time.

“What the devil’s
that?
” demanded the beard.

“My evidence, Private.” Outwardly calm, inwardly aquiver, he drew out the top section of the box with its two knobs and their two sets of horns. Each horn was hollow and had a light inside. Roan turned them on.

“I asked you a question,” rumbled the Private.

“Your patience,” Roan responded.

What patience?
Granny’s chuckle did more good for Roan than a week’s delay.

“Ready now, Private. May I have the use of some small object—your stylus, perhaps, or a small book?”

“You have taken my money and you are taking my time. Is it now your intention to take my property?”

Whyncha spit in his eye?

Roan threw up a glance of such extreme annoyance that the inaudible voice apologized.

Sorry. It’s just that I’m on your side, honey
.

Honey! He had tasted his very first honey is his “dream.” That was a nice thing to call someone. He wondered if anyone had ever thought of it before. To the Private, he said, “If I use my own property, there could be some suspicion of previous preparation.”

“I suspect the previous preparation with which you are cluttering up my office already,” growled the old man. “Here’s the old paperweight. It dates from the time when buildings had sliding panels opening to the outside air. If anything happens to it—”

“It will do,” said Roan levelly, taking it without thanks. The Private’s eyebrow ridges moved briefly. “Would you kindly point out a spot on the floor?”

With an expression of saintly patience, the Private drew out his stylus and threw it. It fell near the far wall. Roan placed the paperweight near the point of the stylus, on the carpet.

“And one more indulgence. A point on your desk—somewhere with enough area to support that paperweight.”

“Damn it, no! Go get those cards and we’ll settle the matter in hand. I fail to see—”

Don’t let him rant. Find your own spot and ask him if it suits him
.

Like a man in a hailstorm, Roan advanced through the booming and shrieking syllables and pointed.

“Will this do?” he shouted, just loud enough to be heard over the storm.

The Private stopped just then and Roan’s voice was like an airfoil
crashing the sound barrier. Both men recoiled violently; to his own astonishment, Roan found that he recovered first. The old man was still sunk deep in his chair, the base of the beard quivering. In Roan’s ear, Granny cackled.

Roan grasped the two horns protruding from one of the spheres on his machine and turned them so that the beam from each rested on the center of the paperweight.

“The production model would have other means of aiming,” he explained as he worked. “This is for demonstration only.” The other two beams were aimed at the indicated spot on the desk. “Ready now, Private.”

“For what?” snarled the Private, then grunted as if he had swallowed a triple ration of roughage, for when Roan touched the control, there was a soft click and the paperweight appeared on the desk, exactly in the small pool of light from the beams. He put out a hand, hesitated, dropped back in his chair. “Again.”

Roan threw the lever the other way. The paperweight lay quietly on the carpet. “For years, I have used every available minute on the research needed for this device and in building it. If the Private feels that the machine is of no use to this firm and the industry, that the time spent on it was wasted or stolen, then I shall be satisfied with his previously suggested—”

“Now come off it, son,” said the beard. He rose and approached Roan, but kept his eyes glued on the machine in fascination. “You know the old man was just trying to throw a scare into you.”

Got ’im!

“Could a large model be built?”

“Larger than a transplat,” Roan said.

“Have you built any larger than this?”

Tell him yes!

“Yes, Private.”

Slowly, the Private’s eyes left the machine and traveled to Roan’s face. Roan would have liked to retreat, but his back was against the wooden case.

Watch out!

“You feel this could be better than the transplat?”

Yes. Tell ’im yes—even if it hurts, tell im!

Roan found he could not speak. He tremblingly nodded his head.

“Hmm.” The Private walked around the machine and back, though there was nothing to be seen. “Tell me,” he said gently, “is this machine built on the same principle as the transplat?”

Sweat broke out on Roan’s brow. He wished he could wipe it off, but to raise his glove would have been a rudeness. He let it trickle.

“No,” he whispered.

“You are telling me that this is a new kind of machine, better than the transplat!” When Roan neither moved nor spoke, the Private suddenly shouted, “Liar!”

Roan, white, dry-mouthed, with a great effort brought his eyes up to meet those of the livid Private. “A transplat can’t do that,” he said, nodding to the paperweight.

“You’ve got to be lying! If there was such a machine as this, you couldn’t build it. You couldn’t even conceive it! Where did you get it?”

Say you built it—quick!

“I built it,” Roan breathed.

“I can’t understand it,” mumbled the Private.

Roan had never seen him so distressed and his curiosity got the better of his own tension. “What is it that you want me to say, Private?”

The Private swung around, face to face with his son. “You’re holding something back. What is it?”

This is it! Now hold tight, honey. Tell him it works by PK
.

Roan shook his head and set his lips, and the Private roared at him. “Are you refusing to answer me?”

Tell him, tell him about the PK. Tell him!

Roan had never felt so torn apart. There had to be more to this than he knew about. What was pushing him? What tied his tongue, knotted his stomach, swelled his throat?

Trust me, Roan. Trust me, no matter what
.

It broke him. He choked out, “This is only a direction-finder. It works
by psychokinetic energy.”

“By what? What?” The Private fairly bounced with eagerness.

“It’s called PK. Mental power.”

“Then it really isn’t a machine at all!”

“Well—yes, you might say so. That’s my theory, anyway.” And where were the tied tongue, the aching throat? Gone!

“And you believe in that psycho-stuff?”

Roan found himself smiling. “It works.”

“Why were you hiding it?”

“Would you have believed in such a thing, Private?”

“I confess I wouldn’t.”

“Well, then—I wanted to get it finished and tested, that’s all.”

“Then what?”

Give it to him. I mean it—give it to him!

“Why, it’s yours. Ours. The company’s. What else?”

The dry sound was the slow rubbing of gloved hands together. The other, which only Roan heard, was Granny’s acid chuckle.
And he didn’t even ask where the psychic operator was—notice? And he never will
.

The Private said, “Would you like to work with the Development Department on the thing?”

Sure, honey. I’ll never let you down
.

“Fine,” Roan said.

“You’ll never know—you can’t know what this really means,” said the Private. For a moment, Roan was sure he was going to clap him on the shoulder or some such unthinkable thing. “I can own up to a mistake. You should’ve been on the nuts-and-bolts end right from the start. Instead, I had you chasing inventories and consignments. Well, you’ve shown up the old man. From now on, your time’s your own. You just work on anything around here that amuses you.”

“I couldn’t do that!”

Yes, by God, you could!
snapped the voice in his ear.
And while he’s soft, hit him again. Get your own home
.

His own home! With one of those PK machines, he could go anywhere, anytime. He could take Val—and find Flower again!

IX

It was warm and windy and very dark. The village was asleep and only a handful of people sat around the great trestle table in the clearing. The stars watched them and the night-birds called.

“To get grim about it,” said the old lady in a voice a good deal less than grim, “breaking up a culture isn’t something you can do on an afternoon off. You’ve got to know where it’s been and where it is, before you know where it’s going. That takes a good deal of time. Then you have to decide how much it needs changing and, after that, whether or not you were right when you decided. Then, it’s a good idea to know for sure—but for
sure
—that you don’t push it so far, it flops over some other gruesome way.”

“But I was right all the same, wasn’t I?” Roan insisted.

“Bless you, yes. You don’t know how right.”

“Then tell me.”

“Some of it’ll hurt.”

“Don’t hurt him,” said Flower, half-seriously. Roan took her hand in the dark, feeling, as always, the indescribable flood within him brought by the simple touch of living flesh.

“Have to, honey,” said Granny. “Blisters’ll hurt him too, and his joints will ache at plowin’ time, but in the long run he’ll be all the better for it. Who’s there?” she called.

A voice from the darkness answered, deep and happy, “Me, Granny. Prester.”

“Hi, Granny,” said Val. They came into the dim, warm glow of the hurricane lamp guttering on the table. Val was wearing a very short sleeveless tunic, which looked as if a spider had spun it. She and Prester moved arm in arm like a single being. Looking at her face, Roan felt dazzled. He squeezed Flower’s hand and found her smiling.