Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (45 page)

He stiffened, noting out the corner of an eye that neither of the others had moved. Hah, they were resigned to a situation from which there was no escape. Teleportatively manipulated, the lock began to turn slowly and apparently of its own accord.

The door commenced to move, drifting inward inch by inch as if wafted by a gentle breeze or unobtrusively edged by the ultra-cautious hand of someone lurking in the outer dark. A yellowish coil of night fog slithered through the gradually widening gap and brought odors of resin, rotting leaves, warm bark and wet fungi.

No sound came through the opening other than the dull thumping of fuel pumps over at the spaceport and faint strains of music from four or five streets away where restless nocturnals were trying to live the fuller life. There was utter silence within the room, not even the whispering of a drawn breath. This and the door’s tedious motion created an immense tension that was as much as Thorstern’s overstretched nerves could stand.

His eyes were straining at the gap, his ears shocked by the total lack of anticipated uproar, his mind trying to operate along ten channels at once. Who was there, waiting outside? Did they have weapons ready? Fingers taut, triggers already partway back? If he made a mad jump for that opening would he leap into a deadly volley and go down for ever and ever and ever?

Or had they a telepath to warn them of his intentions so that they would hold their fire? But, of course, a telepath could not thus warn them because he was still hesitating, had not reached a decision A telepath could read his thoughts and yet be completely unable to forecast a split-second conclusion. There were no prognosticators in any positive sense.

The moments crawled like eons while he watched the door which now had ceased its motion halfway round its arc and remained invitingly ajar. The dark gap to the street tantalized him.

Why the devil were they waiting? Were they fearful of the risk to himself if they charged blindly through? Perhaps they had a plan that required him to take certain synchronized action. In heaven’s name, why were they waiting?

More fog rolled in. Noticing it for the first time, he was smitten with a plausible solution—gas! Yes, that was it, that was the idea! Send gas in with the fog. Anyone familiar with the defenses of the castle, and especially of Room Ten, would have thought of it right away. So they wanted him to stay firmly put until he collapsed along with his captors. Then they would enter in safety, revive him, give him the other pair to pull to pieces.

It was possible that Raven and the fat one knew what was coming. It had sparked brightly within his own mind and therefore they must have seen it—unless they had been too busy probing the think-boxes beyond the door. Can a telepath deal with more than one brain at a time? Can he probe several simultaneously? Thorstern was not certain. He lacked data on the point. Anyway, these two would get the same result from other minds—gas! And what could they do about it? Nothing! The mightiest of mutants is as much an animal as any pawn in that he
has
to breathe.

His nostrils tried to detect the insidious approach of the invisible weapon though he knew almost certainly that it would be odorless. There should be other signs. A slowing of the pulse. Slightly more labored breathing. A sudden miasma in the mind. Eagerly he kept watch on himself, alert for symptoms, and waited a mere half-minute that he sensed as half an hour. Then he broke. It was too much. He could endure no more, no more, no more.

With an agonized bellow of, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” he sprang into the gap in the doorway. “It’s me! It’s Thor—” His voice died away.

Staring with stupefaction into the shrouded night, he posed there a short time while his brain broadcast its reactions.

“Nobody here. Nobody, not a soul. They fooled me. They made me hear things, imagine things. They treated me like a rat in a laboratory, stimulated to see which way it turns in its fight for life. Then they released the lock and opened the door. Hypnos and teleports at one and the same time. That’s multitalented, no matter what the experts may say. The hell-devils!” His neural impulses suddenly boosted to maximum amplitude. “Run for it, you idiot, run!”

And then the unexpected happened, the sort of thing that upsets the best laid plans of mice and men. Thorstern’s tremendous psychic strain had brought it on, invited it.

With one hand braced on the doorpost, the empty street before him, inwardly bolstered by the certitude that armed search-parties must be somewhere in the locality, he lifted a foot for the first swift step in a wild dash for freedom. He never made it.

His body poised for the effort, he stood unmoving while a thoroughly bewildered expression came into his hard face. Slowly he put down the uplifted foot, slowly sank to his knees like one prostrating himself before an unseeable god. His agitated thought-stream had now gone into a violent swirl that flung out odd words and phrases.

“No ... oh, no
don’t
!... I can’t, I tell you ... let me alone ...
Steen
... It wasn’t my fault . . . oh, let me—”

He toppled forward, writhed around in soundless pain. Already Raven was bending over him, features tight and serious. Charles had come hurriedly out of his chair, manifestly taken by surprise. Mavis appeared in the kitchen doorway, her eyes condemning but her lips saying nothing.

Raven grasped the stricken man’s right hand and at once the bodily contortions ceased. Retaining his grip, he twisted his own arm and bent the elbow several times as one does when trying to cling to a wire loaded with excruciating voltage. He seemed to be battling against something, struggling with something. Thorstern opened his mouth, gasped like a landed fish.

“No, no, go away . . . leave me . . . I—”

Lumbering around to the other side, Charles helped lift the heavy body, take it across the room and settle it in a chair. Mavis closed the door but did not bother to reset the lock. Frowning to herself, she returned to the kitchen.

In a little while Thorstern gulped once or twice, opened shocked eyes, heaved himself upright in the chair. There were weird thrills running through his nerves and a highly unpleasant sensation like effervescence in his blood stream. His limbs lacked strength and his insides seemed turned to water. Much as he hated to admit it even to himself he was more shaken than ever he’d been in his life. His face was colorless, like wax. Curiously enough, his mind retained no memory of the words he had uttered in his throes, no knowledge of what had really taken place.

Glowering at Raven, he said in trembling tones, “You squeezed my heart.”

“I did not.”

“You almost killed me.”

“Not guilty.”

“Then it was
you. ”
He turned his head to glare at Charles.

“Me, neither. The truth is that we saved you
—if
you can call it salvation.” Charles smiled at a secret thought. “But for us you would now be one of the late lamented.”

“Do you expect me to believe that? One of you two did it.”

“How?” inquired Raven, examining him both outwardly and inwardly.

“One of you is a teleport. He unlocked and opened that door without stirring an inch. He squeezed my heart the same way.
That’s
what you did to Greatorex!”

“A teleport moves objects by exterior influence,” Raven contradicted. “He can’t get inside people and rearrange their plumbing.”

“I was nearly gone,” insisted Thorstern, rocked by his nearness to death. “I could feel my heart being compressed, my body going down. It was as if I were being dragged by main force out of my own body. Somebody did it!”

“Not necessarily. A million die every day without anyone’s assistance.”

“I can't die like that.” He made it childishly complaining.

“Why not?”

“I’m fifty-eight and there’s nothing wrong with me.” Gingerly he felt himself, gauged the thumping inside his chest. “Nothing wrong.”

“So it seems,” said Raven, pointedly.

“If I am fated to go naturally, of a heart attack, it is too much of a coincidence for me to drop at this very moment.”

He’d made a good point there, he decided. Pinned it on them effectively. Though it would do no good whatever, he was anxious to saddle them with the blame for no other reason than because they were so insistent about refusing it. He could not understand that. Why should they deny bringing him down flat in the doorway when they could boast about it with far more intimidating effect?

But deep, deep down inside himself—thrust into an obscure corner where he wouldn’t have to look at it—lurked the dreadful idea that perhaps they were right. Perhaps his time was more limited by destiny than he had assumed. No man is immortal. Maybe he had only a little time to go and the sands were trickling out fast.

Dragging it right into the light and compelling him to survey it, Raven said, “If you were so fated it would most likely come at a moment of considerable nervous strain. So where is the coincidence? Anyway, you did not run and you did not die. Next week you may expire. Or tomorrow. Or before dawn. No man knoweth the day or the hour.” He pointed at the other’s midget chronometer. “Meanwhile, the five minutes have become fifteen.”

“I give up.” Finding a large handkerchief, Thorstern wiped his beaded forehead. His breathing was erratic and he remained sheet-white. “I give up.”

It was true. More penetrating minds could see the truth inside him, a genuine verity born of half a dozen hastily thought up reasons, some contradictory but all satisfying.

“Can’t run in top gear forever. Ease down and live longer. Got to look after myself. Why build for somebody’s benefit after I’ve gone? Wollencott is twelve years younger than me, thinks he’ll be the big boss when I’m down the hole. Why should I work and scheme and sweat for his sake? A ham actor. A malleable I raised from the gutter and made into a man. Just a trap-shooting mutant.
Floreat Venusia
—under a stinking mutant! Even Terra does better. Heraty and most of the Council are normals—Gilchist assured me of that.”

Raven made a mental note of that last bit: Gilchist, a World Councilor. The traitor in the camp and undoubtedly the character who had betrayed him to the underground movement on Terra. The man whose name Kayder and the others did not know because they didn’t want to know it.

“Or if it’s not one mutant it’ll be another,” morbidly continued Thorstern’s mind. “One of them will bide his time, take over my empire like taking milk from a kitten. I was safe enough while all attention was focused on Wollencott but now they’ve gone back of him and found me. The mutants have powers. Someday they will organize themselves against the common run of men. I wouldn’t care to be here then!”

His eyes lifted, discovered the others watching. “I’ve told you I give up. What more do you want?”

“Nothing.” Raven nodded toward the wall phone. “Like me to call an antigrav to take you home?”

“No. I’ll walk. Besides, I don’t trust you.”

Arising shakily, he felt his chest again. Within him was suspicion of their ready acceptance of surrender and their casual release. Judging them by himself, he felt sure that another and different trap was waiting somewhere for him to walk into. Had they timed something to happen at the other end of this road, well away from the house? Perhaps another heart-squeeze, to the finish?

“We
trust
you
because of what is visible in your mind,” Raven told him. “It’s your hard luck that you lack the ability to see into ours. If you could you would know beyond all shadow of doubt that we play square. You won’t be touched by us—unless you renege.”

Mooching to the door, Thorstern opened it, looked them over for the last time. His face retained its pallor and had aged a little, but he had recovered a measure of his dignity.

“I have promised to put a stop to all hostile action against Terra,” he said. “I shall keep my promise to the letter—that
and no more!”

Stepping into the dark, he gave his parting shot a touch of absurdity by carefully closing the door behind him. It would have been more fitting had he thrust it wide or slammed it enough to shake the house. But fifty years ago a tall and bitter woman had boxed his ears for slamming doors and, all unknown to him, the ears still tingled.

Following the walls he hurried along the road at the best pace he could muster. Visibility extended to three yards and that made him like a half-blind man.

Now and again he stopped to listen through the mist, then hastened onward. At this unearthly hour there would be few people about other than fidgety nocturnals or roaming patrols. He had covered an unestimable distance before he detected noises to his left.

Cupping hands, he hailed, “Are you there?”

Feet speeded up. The patrol loomed out of the yellow haze, six of them, heavily armed. “What’s the matter?”

“I can tell you where to find David Raven!”

Back in the room Charles stopped his careful listening. “He has tried desperately to remember—but he can’t. He is muzzy-minded. Doesn’t know which way to send them. He’ll soon give up and go home.”

Crossing heavy legs, he nursed his stomach. “When he flopped in the doorway I thought for a moment that you were taking him for your very own. Then I picked up your mental yelp of surprise.”

“And I thought it was you snatching his ego.” Raven frowned to himself. “It caught me napping. Good job I reached him so quickly or he’d have been gone.”

“Yes, a heart attack.” The moon eyes grew bright. “One more stunt like that and the news will be out.”

“Somebody was irrationally precipitate,” said Raven, looking serious. “Somebody had a one-track mind and couldn’t wait to be educated. That’s wrong, very wrong. It mustn’t happen again!”

“He held out a long time and gave up slowly, which makes an invitation almost too strong to resist,” reminded Charles with the air of one explaining everything. “So the would-be emperor of Venus was mighty lucky. If he had gone it would have been relatively quick. Oh, well, he’s a tough character with more than his share of fortitude. Nothing less could have scared him into reasonable pacifism. Maybe it was all for the best. His mind holds no notion of what really occurred and that is the main thing.”