Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (31 page)

“Haller’s a pyrotic,” Kayder observed. “You are a telepath. Did you overlook those simple facts? Or were you too stupefied by events to remember them?”

“I was not. I had a look inside his skull.”

“And what did you find?”

“It was mussed up something awful. His think-stuff was like freshly stirred porridge. He was nursing long chains of pseudo-logic and working through them like prayer beads. One said, ‘Steen is me is Raven is you is the others is everyone.’

Another said, ‘Life is not-life is soon-life is wonder-life but not other-life.’ ” He screwed a finger above his right ear. “A complete imbecile.”

“Bad overdose of hypno,” diagnosed Kayder, undisturbed. “Haller must have had hypno-allergy. There’s no way of detecting it until a victim goes off the beaten track. Probably it’s permanent, too.”

“Maybe it was accidental. Steen wouldn’t know that Haller was susceptible. I like to think so.”

“That’s because you hate to believe that a pal of yours could or would turn on his friends and make them squint down their own spines. Whether by accident or not, Steen put paid to Haller, one of his own crowd and his immediate superior to boot. We have a nasty name for that kind of game. It’s treachery!”

“I don’t think so,” insisted Grayson, doggedly. “Raven’s got something to do with this. Steen wouldn’t do us dirt without good reason.”

“Of course he wouldn’t,” agreed Kayder, his beefy face sardonic. He threw several tiny chirrups at the green spider-thing. It performed a bizarre little dance that might have meant something.

Kayder continued, “Everyone has a reason, good, bad or indifferent. Take me, for instance. Reason why I’m an honest, loyal and absolutely trustworthy citizen of Venus is because nobody’s ever offered me enough inducement to be otherwise. My price is too high.” He tossed a knowing glance at the other. “I can make a shrewd guess at what’s wrong with Steen. He’s a low-priced man and Raven found it out.” 

“Even if he’s the sort to be bought over, which I doubt, how could he be? He made no contacts.”

“He was alone with Raven, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” admitted Grayson. “For less than a couple of minutes and in the adjoining room with me still listening in. Raven’s mind remained blank. Steen’s mind told that Raven turned to face him as if about to say something. Raven touched him—and Steen promptly went blank too. A hypno can’t do that. A hypno can’t shut off like a telepath—but he did!”

“Ah!” said Kayder, watching him.

“That hit me immediately. It was mighty queer. I got up to go see what had happened. Then Steen reappeared. I was so relieved that I failed to notice he was still blank. Before I could catch on to that fact he had me where he wanted me.” Apologetically Grayson finished, “I was naturally wary of Raven but completely off guard with Steen. You don’t expect an ally suddenly to knock you down.”

 “Of course not.” Kayder chirped again at the spider which obediently moved aside while he reached for his desk-mike. “We'll make it a double hunt. Just as easy to look for two as for one. We’ll soon have Steen dragged in for examination.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Grayson offered. “
I’m
here.” He paused to let it sink in. “Steen knows of this place, too.”

“Meaning you think he might rat on us and we’re due for a raid?”

“Yes.”

“I doubt it.” Calmly Kayder pondered the point. “If Terran counter-forces had learned of this center and decided to put it out of business they’d have moved fast. We’d have had our raid hours ago while there was still an element of surprise.”

“What’s to stop them being craftier and tougher than that? What’s to stop them biding their time while they make suitable preparations and then blowing the entire place sky-high?”

“You’re jumpy,” scoffed Kayder. “We’ve got too much talent around here— and besides failure could drive us into hiding. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”

“I suppose so.” Grayson was moody, uncertain.

“Anyhow, they’ve no publicly satisfactory excuse for taking such drastic measures. They can’t take active and open part in a war while pretending it doesn’t exist. Until they admit what they don’t want to admit we’ve got them where we want them. The initiative is ours and remains ours.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“You bet I’m right.” Kayder sniffed his contempt of any other outlook. He switched his mike, activating it. “D727 Hypno Steen has gone bad on us. Get him at all costs and with minimum of delay!”

Muffled by the heavy door an outside loudspeaker repeated, “D727 Hypno Steen.” Then another, farther away along the labyrinth of corridors. “D727 Hypno Steen . . . get him . . . with minimum of delay!”

At the other end of the underground maze and nearer the secret entrance a nose-close worker threw an irritable nod at a loudspeaker he could not see, then delicately inserted into its minuscule holder a triode-hexode radio tube the size of a match-head. Next door, an unshaven pyrotic slapped his jack of clubs on a floater’s five of hearts.

“Socko! You owe me fifty.” He leaned back, rubbed his chin bristles. “Gone bad on us, eh? Never heard of such a thing.”

“He’ll be sorry,” prophesied a kibitzer,

“Nuts!” said the first. “Nobody’s sorry after they’re dead!”

Leina sensed him returning, glanced through the window, saw him entering the path. A hint of disapproval showed in her fine eyes. She drew away from the curtains.

“He’s back. Something has gone wrong.” She opened the door to the adjoining room, “I refuse to stay here to watch your meeting. Wrong is wrong and right is right. I cannot see it any other way even as a matter of expediency.”

“Don’t leave me alone with him. Don’t, I tell you! I won’t be able to control myself. I’ll try to kill him though he may kill me. I’ll—”

“You will do nothing of the sort,’’ she reproved. “Would you foolishly slaughter your own, your very own self?” She paused, hearing a mental voice call, “Leina!” but not answering it. “Remember your promise: absolute obedience. Do as he tells you; it’s your only chance.”

She went through, closing the door and leaving him to deal with his fate as ordered. Finding a chair, she seated herself- primly. Her air was that of a schoolmarm determined not to be involved in a piece of inexcusable vulgarity.

Someone came into the other room, his mind reaching through the wall and nudging her gently. “It’s all right, Leina, you can come out in a minute.” Then vocally to the other, “You ready to get back?”

Silence.

“Surely you
want
to get back, don’t you?”

A whisper, “You damn vampire, you know I do!”

“Here then!”

Leina closed her eyes though there was nothing to see. A few swift, subdued gasps and one small sob came from the next room. They were followed by a deep and thankful breathing. She stood up, taut-faced, and went to the door. She looked at Steen who sat limp and pale on the pneumatic settee, noted the frightened introspection in orbs that at other times could burn with fierce, hypnotic intensity.

Raven said to Steen, “I took possession of your body. Even though you are an enemy I apologize for that. It is not proper to usurp the persons of the living without their willing permission.”

“The
living
?"Steen went two shades paler as he put emphasis on that last word. “Is it therefore proper to usurp the persons of the
dead?
His mind was in a turmoil. “You mean—?”

“Jump to no wild conclusions,” advised Raven, seeing the other’s thoughts as clearly as if they were a page of print. “You might be right. You might be hopelessly wrong. Either way it won’t help you one iota.”

“David,” put in Leina, eyeing the window, “what if they soon come back in greater strength and better prepared?”

“They’ll come,” he assured, unworried. “But not just yet. I’m gambling on them thinking it would be nonsensical for the prey to return to the trap. It will occur to them sometime and they’ll come along to check up, by which time they’ll be too late.” He resumed with Steen. “They are scouring the planet for me, attributing to me an importance out of all proportion. Somebody must have given them information to make them so excited. Somebody high up in Terran affairs must have betrayed his trust. Do you know who it is?”

“No.”

He accepted the denial without hesitation, for it was written indelibly on the other’s mind.

“They’re hunting for you as well.”

“Me?” Still shaken, Steen tried to pull himself together.

“Yes. I made a bitter mistake, I blundered badly by trying to take over the commander of your vessel. He proved to be something more than a standard pyrotic.

He had intuitive perceptiveness, a well developed form of extra-sensory visions. It enabled him to see or sense or estimate things that he is not entitled to know.”

He glanced sidewise as Leina drew in a quick breath and put a hand to her throat.

“I did not expect that. There was no evidence of it and it caught me by surprise,” Raven went on. “There’s the beginning of a Type Thirteen, a pyrotic with e.s.p. He doesn’t realize it himself, doesn’t know he’s slightly out of the ordinary even for a mutant.” Studying the floor, he doodled with the toe of one shoe on the nap of the carpet. “The instant that we made contact he knew me as you will never know me—and he found it too much to bear. He made a frantic snatch at what he conceived to be the only form of self-preservation immediately available. He was wrong, of course, but people don’t think logically in a crisis. So he made himself useless to me.”

“Meaning?” inquired Steen, looking ghastly.

“He’s whirly,” said Raven. “They blame
you
for that.”

“Blame me?” echoed Steen. “My body?” He stood up, felt himself around the chest and face, studied himself in a mirror. He was like a child ensuring the faultlessness of new clothes. “My body,” he repeated. Then with heated protest, “But it wasn’t
me!”

“Try convincing them of that.”

“They’ll put a telepath to work on me. He’ll read the truth. I can’t feed him a lot of lies—it’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible. The word ought to be expunged from the dictionary. You could tell outrageous lies all the way from here to Aldebaran if you’d first been conditioned by a hypno more powerful than yourself.”

“They wouldn’t kill me for that,” mused Steen, greatly troubled. “But they’d plant me someplace safe and for keeps. That’s a worse fate, being put away. I couldn’t endure it. I’d rather be dead!”

Raven chuckled. “You may not know it but you’ve got something there.”

“You’re in a sweet position to consider it funny,” Steen snapped back, missing the point because it was too far out of reach for him to capture. “Who could put
you
in cold storage when within five minutes you could confiscate the person of a guard and walk out on his legs? Why, you could carry on from there, go grab the right official and sign an order for your own release. You could . . . you could—” His voice trailed off as his thoughts roared along in a mighty flood and tried to carry endless possibilities to an utterly fantastic limit.

Tracking his mind, Raven registered a faint smile as he said, “You certainly can extend it fast and far. But even if in the end I did swap places with the secret lord of the Mars-Venus combine I doubt whether I’d seal the peace I’d imposed by marrying Terra’s leading beauty. Tsk-tsk! You’ve been reading too many of those cheap and lurid Martian romances, or watching them on the spectroscreen.”

“That may be,” conceded Steen, long accustomed to having his inward notions dragged out and criticized. “All the same it looks like someone will have to blow you apart to stop you.” His attention shifted to Leina, came back. “Even that wouldn’t do much good if there are any more of your type around, ready to fill your place.”

“Beginning to think of us as on the winning side, eh?” Raven smiled again, said to Leina, “Seems it’s just as well I did take him over.”

“I say it’s wrong,” she responded, firmly. “Always has been, always will be.”

“I agree with you in principle,” Raven answered. He returned to Steen. “Look, I’ve not come back here solely for the fun of it. I’ve a reason and it concerns you.”

“In what way?”

“First of all, are you now willing to play on our side or do you insist on sticking to your own?”

“After this experience,” explained Steen, fidgeting, “I feel that changing sides should be the safest. But I can’t do it.” He shook a positive head. “I’m not made that way. The fellow who’ll renege on his own kind is a louse.”

“So you remain anti-Terran?”

“No!” He shuffled his feet around, avoided the other’s steady gaze. “I won’t be a traitor. At the same time I feel that all this anti-Terran business is crazy—gaining nothing.” His voice drifted off as morbidly as he considered the situation. “All I really want is to get home, sit tight and be neutral.”

That was true. It showed in his troubled mind. Steen had been shaken to his psychic roots, was fed up and lacked all original enthusiasm. It is a great shock to lose a limb; greater to be deprived of a body.

“Back home you’re likely to have a rough time trying to sit on the fence,” Raven suggested. “When parochial hysterics look around for easy marks on whom to vent their spite they usually choose a neutral.”

“I’ll take my chance on that.”

“Have it your own way.” Raven nodded toward the door. “There’s your road to freedom; the price is one item of information.”

“What do you want to know?”

“As I’ve told you, some high up Terran ratted on me. Someone on our side is a stinker. You’ve already said you don’t know who it is. Who’s likely to know?”

“Kayder,” said Steen, mostly because he was in no position to refuse the information. The name popped into his mind automatically, could be read by the other as if inscribed in neon lights.

“Who is he? Where does he live?”

That was easier, not too dangerous. Where does he
live?
It enabled him to picture Kayder and his private residence while managing to suppress all thoughts of the underground center. Nor need his conscience bother him. Outside of the secret center Kayder cynically exercised his Terran rights to the full, even ran a small but genuine Venusian import agency. Kayder was fully capable of looking after himself.