Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (64 page)

“She did not
know
it was you?” repeated Conway. “You mean she was in no way telepathic herself?”

“I hadn’t any evidence of it. There was only that abnormal sensitivity which, I suppose, has been developed as a defense-mechanism some place else. She did know beyond all doubt that suddenly and without warning a strange and dangerous mind had lifted her mask and seen beneath. She gave out a panicky thought that she must get away, she must warn the others that they’re not as well-hidden as they think, that they
can
be exposed.”

“A—a—ah!” Conway displayed hopefulness. “So she knew the precise location of these others? She knew how to get into touch with them?”

“If so,” said Harper, “her mind did not admit it. Things were moving fast. We were both thunderstruck by the encounter. Her mind was yelling, ‘
Escape, escape, escape
' while mine ordered imperatively,
‘Stop her, stop, stop . . . kill, kill!’
I shot her down without any compunctions whatsoever. I'd quite forgotten that she was a girl or had been a girl. For the moment she was something else, something that had to be laid good and cold. I gave her the magazine right through the bean. I heard the alien mentality cease sizzling and fade to nothingness. That showed it could die just the same as anybody else.”

“Then you went away without making further examination?”

“I did. I went fast. I’d no time for further horsing around. I didn’t dare risk being picked up anywhere but here. To tell this story in any police barracks or sheriff’s office, where they didn’t know the score, would eventually land me in an asylum.”

“Couldn’t you have saved time, trouble and anxiety by calling us long distance?”

“How far would I have got that way? Some underling would have listened, smirked knowingly and sent police to the booth to pick up a loony. I’ve had a tough enough job reaching the right people in person. At that I reckon I’m lucky. I hope to make it to the Pearly Gates with less trouble.”

None of the listeners relished that remark but were unable to deny the truth of it. A formidable guard of minor officials stood between the high executive and a besieging force of malcontents, theorists, halfwits and world-doomers. Perforce they also held at bay the rare individual with something genuinely worth hearing.

General Conway harrumphed, decided that there were no satisfactory methods of overcoming this difficulty, went on to say, “You have made contact with an alien life-form. So far as we know you’re the only one who has done so and remained able and willing to talk about it. Can you add anything that may help us to determine the true nature of the foe?”

“I didn’t see it with my own two eyes. Therefore I cannot assist you with an accurate description.”

“Quite so. But you must have gained some kind of an impression.”

Thinking it over, Harper conceded, “Yes, that’s true.”

“Let us have it. No matter how vague or fleeting, we need every datum we can get on this subject.”

“For no apparent reason I felt that alien ownership of another body is a natural phenomenon. That is to say, I knew more or less instinctively that the thing occupying the body of Jocelyn Whittingham was functionally designed for such a purpose, was perfectly at home and knew how to use what it had gained. The girl was a human being from toes to hair in all respects but one: another and different life-spark had been substituted.”

“Which suggests that its nature is wholly parasitic?” asked Conway. “It normally exists in possession of some other life-form?”

“Yes. It’s an old hand at that game.”

“And that in turn suggests that when it acquires another body it also gains the data within the brain, all the knowledge, the memory and so forth?”

“Undoubtedly. It could not survive without doing so. Otherwise its own incompetence would betray it at once.”

Turning his attention to Benfield, the general remarked, “The inevitable deduction is that Venus harbors various life-forms, some of which are the natural prey of a possessive parasite. Also that this parasite is capable of taking over a form higher than any in its own habitat. It can adapt right out of its own environment and, if I may put it that way, it can raise itself by its own bootstraps.”

Benfield nodded agreement.

“Also,” continued Conway, “it is probably microscopic or germlike. That’s my guess. I’ll have to leave that angle to others more expert. They’ll be able to make shrewder estimates of its characteristics.”

“It would help more than somewhat if we could discover how that girl was mastered,” Harper pointed out. “Her body might tell the story.”

“That is being looked into. We have confiscated her corpse despite violent objections from her relatives.”

Harper looked at him, eyes glowing. “Which of them raised the biggest out-cry:

About to add something more, Conway paused, closed his mouth, opened it, registered momentary bafflement.

“Why?”

“We Venusians must stick together.”

“You mean—?”

“Yes, I mean what you’re now thinking.”

Firming his lips, Conway reached for the phone, ordered, “Take the entire Whittingham family into safe keeping at once. No, it is not an arrest. There are no charges. Tell them it’s for their own protection. Eh? If their lawyer chips in, refer him directly to me.”

“That will do a fat lot of good,” remarked Harper. “If one or more of the Whittinghams is no longer of this world you’re helping him create a bunch of Venusian cops out west.”

“It’s a risk we’ll have to take.”

“Not necessarily. You could put them in animal cages and feed them with long tongs. Anything, anything so long as they can’t get near enough to help themselves to their own guards.”

“That would be gross violation of their constitutional rights. We could get away with such tactics only by justifying them before the public. To do that we must release information that we wish to preserve, at least for the time being.” His eyes questioned Harper as if to say, “What’s the answer to that?”

Harper took it up promptly. “Tell them the truth. Tell the Whittinghams that Jocelyn died of a new, malignant and highly contagious disease. They must be isolated until found free from it. The black plague again.”

“What, when they know she was shot?”

“I
had the disease. I was raving mad with it. I touched her, contaminated her. She’s lucky to be dead. You’ve got to give a clean bill of health to whoever handled her afterward. Scare them with a yarn like that. Some clause in the health laws can be finagled to cover their incarceration. No protectors of civil liberties are going to bawl about the freedom of suspected lepers. And the story will be substantially true, won’t it?”

“You may have something there.” Conway used the phone again, gave instructions, finished, “Consult Professor Holzberger about the technical description of a suitable pretext. What is needed is something strong enough to convince but not strong enough to cause a panic.” He ended, said to Harper, “And now what?”

“When there’s a chance, let me go out there to look them over. If I find them all clean, give them a mock check-up by some worried-looking medico, then let them go. They’ll be too relieved to gripe.”

“But if one of them is possessed?”

“I’ll smell him at first sniff. He’ll know it, too. Keep him at all costs. When the others have gone, pull him apart and see if you can find the pea in his whistle. You could do that without a qualm. So far as humanity is concerned he’s already dead. You’ll be carving an animated corpse. With luck you might be able to isolate whatever is combing his hair.”

Conway frowned. Jameson looked slightly sick. Benfield didn’t enjoy it either; he was visualizing his hands shaving himself at another’s behest.

“We’ll take that up shortly,” said Conway. “There is one more cogent point yet to be considered. You say that the instant you recognized the Whittingham girl her immediate thought was of escape?”

“Yes.”

“But not to a specific place?”

“No.”

“Therefore her impulse to flee was instinctive and no more?”

“Not entirely. She experienced the shock of somebody deprived without warning of a long-established and greatly valued truth, namely, that recognition is impossible. She was confronted with an irrefutable datum contrary to all experience. She felt the dire need to get away from me and tell the others.”

“Which others?
Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know only that
she
didn’t know?”

Harper fidgeted around, brooded at the floor. “Frankly, I’m unable to give a satisfactory answer. Possibly she didn’t have the remotest notion of where the others might be and in that respect had been made irrational by the crisis. Or she may have known but succeeded in suppressing the knowledge, which I doubt. Or—”

“Or what?”

“She may have possessed some alien sense which enables her kind to contact each other. A sense we haven’t got and cannot understand. Something like the homing instinct of pigeons or dogs, but on a species basis.”

“But you are convinced that she was not telepathic?”

“Not in the way that I am.”

“In some other way, perhaps?”

“Nothing is impossible,” said Harper flatly. “It is beyond my power to list the attributes of things native to some place umpteen millions of miles away after a one-second glance. Catch me another dozen. I’ll take a longer look and tell you more.”

Responding to Conway’s gesture, Benfield switched off the tape-recorder. “Catch you another dozen,” echoed Conway. “How the devil are we going to do that? We know of three, and it’s not beyond our resources to find and seize them sooner or later. Getting any others who may be around is a different matter. We have nothing to go upon, no details concerning them, no way of identifying them.” His gaze came up, leveled on Harper. “Excepting through you. That’s why you’re drafted. We require your services to test every suspect we can lay hands on.”

“So I’m expected to stay put, wait for your lineups, look them over and say yes or no?”

“Exactly. There is no other way.”

“There is,” Harper contradicted.

“For instance?”

“You could use me for bait.”

“Eh?”

“They want my matted corpus as badly as you want theirs. They need to learn what makes me a nuisance fully as much as you need to learn about them. In that respect they have an advantage. You must try to grab an unknown number of unknown pseudo-people. They have to snatch one man whose name, address and car tag number have been shouted all over the country. I’m the most ddesirable subject for vivisection they ever heard about since their last picnic on Saturn. Give them half a chance and they’ll swarm around me drooling. All you need do is step in and pinch everyone holding a scalpel.”

Conway breathed heavily and objected, “It’s a risk, a grave risk.”

“Think I’m tickled pink about it?”

“If anything should go wrong we’ll have lost our most effective counter-weapon and be without means to replace it.”

“The beauty of that will be,” said Harper cheerfully, “that I will no longer care one-tenth of a damn. The dead are splendidly indifferent about who wins a war or gains a world.”

“Perhaps not. But we’ll still be living.”

“That won’t concern me either. My great-grandmother doesn’t give a hoot about the hole in my sock.”

“And
you
may still be living,” retorted Conway. “Even though dead.”

“I’ll be a goner either way,” Harper gave back with ghoulish philosophy. “What if some midget alien
is
wearing me like mink?”

He grinned at them, enjoying the repulsion in their minds.

The general was like a chess-player trying to decide whether mate could be ensured by sacrificing his queen. He was far from positive about it but could think up no satisfactory alternative. To his military mind, telepaths were expendable providing the supply of them was unending. Unfortunately they were neither shells nor guns. They could not be manufactured to order. So far as could be determined he had one and only one telepathic weapon in his armory. If that one went there'd be no more.

Even if people with supernormal faculties existed in sufficient number to dispose of this extra-terrestrial menace once and for all, the situation would remain critical. There would come the aftermath. What of them? Could they be trusted to let the world go by? Or would experience of recent events waken them to their own power, tempt them to unite and confiscate the planet? They’d have a good excuse for doing so, an excuse convincing enough to sway the masses: only we could save you last time, only we can save you next time.

Conway was still stewing it over when again his phone called for attention. He took it meditatively, listened, abruptly came to full attention.

“Who? When did this happen? Yes, yes, you’d better.” He cradled it, scowled forward.

“Something wrong?” asked Harper.

“You know what’s wrong. You must have heard the details being recorded in my mind.”

“I wasn’t listening. I was full of my own thoughts. I can’t make noises at myself and at the same time take note of other people’s cerebral trumpetings.”

“One of the witnesses is dead; the old man at the filling station.”

“Murdered?”

“Yes. It happened a couple of hours ago but they found him only within the last fifteen minutes. Whoever did it has a good head start.” Conway cocked an inquiring eye at Jameson. “I don’t know what to think of it. You’ve far more experience in such matters. Do you suppose this may be mere coincidence?”

“How was he killed?” Jameson asked.

“They discovered him lying by his pumps, his skull crushed by a single blow from a heavy instrument. They say it looks as if he filled somebody’s tank and was struck down when he tried to collect.”

“Any evidence of robbery? Had his pockets been emptied or the cash register cleaned out?”

“No.”

“H’m. That doesn’t indicate that robbery wasn’t the motive,” Jameson opined. “The culprits may have been scared off before they could complete the job. Or maybe they were joyriders who slugged him for a free tank of alk, overdid it and made it murder.” He pursed his lips while he mused a bit, finished, “These isolated filling stations get more than their fair share of rough stuff and have done for years. I think it’s quite likely that this is a genuine coincidence. To treat it as of special significance may cause us to lose time chasing up the wrong alley.”