Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (71 page)

“That won’t save him forever.”

“We haven’t got forever. Time is running short. Every day, every hour counts against us.” He shoved open the door as they halted at their destination. “You know only as much as they’ve seen fit to tell you. I’ll tell you something more.”

“What’s that?”

“If progress proves too slow for success, if were compelled to face defeat, you’ll have another bird’s egg in your mental nest before the new year. You’ll be really cuckoo in a new and novel sense of the term. Just like everyone else. At least you’ll be in the fashion—when it’s the latest thing to be one of the walking dead!”

Business was stalled yet again first thing the next morning, and before he had time even to look through the mail. He arrived at the office, having been tailed by his escort all the way from home, removed his hat and made ready to sling it on to a hook.

“Don’t let go,” advised Norris. “Haul it back and stick it on your head. You’re departing right away.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know. They haven’t seen fit to confide in me.” That was true enough. Norris’s mind held no more information than that an official car had arrived to take Harper some place else, that he would be away the full day and that the guard was commanded to maintain its watch on the plant during his absence.

Harper did not argue the matter this time. Reluctantly he was becoming resigned to the situation. Replacing the hat, he went outside, entered the car in which sat only a driver.

As they moved off a second machine bearing four men followed close behind. Harper waved a satirical goodbye to Norris, who was standing on the sidewalk trying to puzzle out the reason for this peremptory removal of the bait from the trap. Around the corner a third car suddenly pulled out from the curb and took the lead. This one also held a hard-looking quartet.

“Quite a cavalcade,” Harper remarked. “Somebody is according me the importance I’ve long deserved.”

The driver made no response, concentrated solely on following the car ahead. He was a beetle-browed individual of the type that doesn’t know the meaning of fear—or any other words. To the rear the third vehicle kept a careful twenty yards distant.

“A hundred dollars if you step on it and lose the entire bunch.”

No reply. Not so much as a smile.

Giving it up, Harper slumped in his seat, half-closed his eyes while his mind felt around like invisible fingers. His own driver, he found, knew nothing except that he must keep on the tail of the leading machine, be prepared for trouble and on no account face it if he could run out of it.

The fingers explored farther.

Those in the leading car knew where the procession was heading. And from that moment, so did Harper. He mulled the new-found knowledge a minute or two, dismissed the purpose as something he would learn in due course, gazed idly through the door-glass at passing shops and pedestrians. With habit born of the last few days he made a mental sweep of the neighborhood every now and again.

They had passed through two sets of traffic lights and over a dozen cross-streets when alien impulses reached him, weak with distance but discernible. Something high up that side-road, six, eight or maybe ten hundred yards away.

Something that flashed pseudo-human thoughts in spasms with gigglings and gobblings between.

He sat up red-faced and snapped, “Quick! Turn up there.”

Beetle-brows firmed his thick lips, gave a warning toot on his horn and speeded up. Two faces peered through the rear window of the car ahead which likewise increased its pace. They whizzed across the road without turning and continued straight on.

“You’re too slow to keep up with your own boots,” commented Harper, sharp-eyed and still listening. “Take this next turn. Make it fast. We can buzz round the block and get him before he fades out.”

The car plunged on. It ignored the turn and the next and the next. The faraway squirming mind thinned into nothingness and was lost.

“You bladderhead!” swore Harper. “You’ve missed a prize chance.”

No retort.

He gave it up, lapsed into ireful silence, wondered whether the brief emanations he’d picked up had come from McDonald himself or from yet another of his unsuspected dupes. There was no way of telling. Such minds do not reveal themselves in terms of human identity. All that could be said for certain was that a mortal enemy wandered loose despite that the whole town was beginning to resemble an armed camp.

Surliness remained with him two hours later when the cars rolled through a strongly guarded gateway in a heavily fenced area, went over a small hill and stopped before a cluster of buildings hidden from sight of the main road. A painted board stood beside the main entrance.

Department Of Defense
Biological Research Laboratories

The four from the pilot car escorted him through the doors in the wary manner of men convinced that given half a chance he would take wings and fly. More people given only part of the story and exaggerating the rest, he decided.

He took a chair in the waiting-room and sat, watched by three of them while the fourth went in search of someone else. In due time the latter returned with a white-coated, gray-haired individual who registered prompt surprise.

“Wade Harper! Well I’m blessed!”

“What’s dumbfounding about it?” growled Harper. “You weren’t soul-shaken last time we met, four years back.”

One of the escort chipped in, saying, “If you and Doctor Leeming already know each other you don’t need an introduction. So we’ll get along.” He went out, taking the others with him.

Leeming explained, “My instructions are to make a check with the help of a specialist who would be brought here this morning. I am given to understand that what he says must be treated as decisive. The specialist’s identity wasn’t revealed.” He backed off a short way, looked the other up and down. “And it’s you. Four years haven’t done you any good. You look older and uglier.”

“So would you if you were in my breeches.” Harper gave a sniff of discontent, went on, “I came like royalty, under strong protection. Toughies to the front of me, toughies to the back of me, and for all I know there was a fleet of helicopters parading overhead. All that rigmarole wasn’t so you could hand me another problem about how to shave the whiskers off a bacillus. Moreover, my mercenary instinct tells me you aren’t aiming to give me a repeat order for twelve thousand dollars’ worth of apparatus. So what’s this all about?”

“I’ll show you.” Doctor Leeming beckoned. “Come along.”

Taking him through a series of corridors, Leeming conducted him into a long room cluttered with scientific glassware, stainless steel instruments and, Harper swiftly noted, a few silk-lined cases of his own especial products. A young man, white-coated, bespectacled and serious, glanced up nervously as they entered.

“My assistant, Doctor Balir,” introduced Leeming. “Meet Wade Harper.” He gestured toward a nearby micromanipulator and its array of accessories. “He’s the fellow who makes this stuff.”

Balir looked suitably impressed, said, “Glad to know you.”

“Then you may number yourself among a select few,” Harper responded.

“Take no notice,” Leeming advised Balir. “He says the first thing that pops into his head.”

“Hence the general ruckus,” commented Harper, “seeing what’s been popping of late.” He stared around. “Well, why am I here?”

Leeming went to a large cabinet, took from it a photograph blown up to full-plate size, handed it over for inspection. It showed a fuzzy white sphere with a band of slight discoloration across its middle.

“A picture of the planet Jupiter,” Harper hazarded, momentarily too preoccupied to check his guess by mental probing.

“On the contrary,” informed Leeming, “it is something far smaller, though massive enough as such things go. That’s an electron-microscope’s view of a protein molecule.”

“If you want to dissect it you’re right out of luck. I can’t get down to any method of handling things
that
tiny.”

“More’s the pity,” said Leeming. “But that’s not what we’re after.”

Returning the photo to the cabinet, he turned to a heavy steel safe set in the wall. Opening it carefully, he took out a transparent plastic sealed container in which was a wadded test-tube one quarter filled with a clear-colorless liquid.

“This,” he announced, “is the same thing multiplied a millionfold. Does it mean anything to you?”

Harper peered at the fluid. “Not a thing.”

“Consider carefully,” Leeming advised. “Because to the best of our belief this is still alive.”

“Alive?”

“By that, I mean potent. It is a virus extracted from the brainpans and spinal cords of certain bodies.”

“A recognizable virus?”

“No.”

“Filterable?”

“We did not attempt to filter it. We isolated it by a new centrifugal process.”

“Then if it’s not dead it’s still dizzy from being whirled,” said Harper. “Let me try again when it has come to its senses.”

“Ah! That’s precisely what we want to know.
Has
it any senses? My information is that you, and you alone, can tell us.” He frowned and continued, “I have my orders which say that it is for you to pronounce the verdict. If you say that this virus is innocuous, it means either that it has been rendered so by processing and isolation or, alternatively, that we’re on the wrong track and must start all over again.”

Harper said, “Anyway, you don’t have to stand there holding it out at arm’s length like a man who’s just dug up a dead cat. Put it back in its coffin and screw down the lid. It will make not the slightest difference to my ability to weigh it up. If that stuff were willing and able to advertise its suspected nature I could have told you about it in the waiting-room without bothering to come this near.” Doing as bidden, Leeming fastened the steel safe, spread expressive hands. “So we’re no farther than at the beginning?”

“Not necessarily,” Harper replied. Leaning against a lab bench, he put on a musing expression while he picked the minds of both Leeming and Balir. Then he said, “You’ve been told that three space-explorers have returned from Venus afflicted with a possessive disease which is spreading. They have sent you bodies of known victims, starting with a girl named Joyce Whittingham. Your job is to isolate what’s doing it, learn its nature and, if possible, devise a cure.”

“Correct,” admitted Leeming. “It’s top secret information. Evidently you’ve been given it too.”

“Given it? I took it with both hands. And it was like pulling teeth.” Harper leaned forward, eyed him intently. “Are you positive that you have extracted the real cause in the form of that virus?”

“I was fairly certain—until your arrival. Now I’m not.”

“What made you so sure?”

“No words of mine can tell you how thoroughly we’ve dealt with those corpses. The task was made doubly difficult by virtue of everything having to be handled remotely, with every possible precaution against direct contact and contamination. We’ve had our leading experts on the job twenty-four hours per day and they’ve done it down to the last fragment of flesh, blood, bone, skin and hair. All we’ve got to show for it is a formerly unknown virus. That could be it. That should be it.” He paused, finished, “But, according to you, it isn’t.”

“I haven’t said so.”

“You said it meant nothing to you.”

“Neither does it—in its present state.” Harper hesitated, continued, “I have the peculiar power to recognize persons afflicted with this disease. If they’ve not told you how I can do it, I cannot either. Call it another top-secret. The damn world’s getting crammed with top-secrets. However, I can tell you one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I recognize the symptoms. You’re asking me to put a finger on the cause. It’s not the same thing, not by a long shot. So far as I’m concerned it’s a quite different problem.”

“Well, can you help with any suggestions?” asked Leeming.

“I can give you my ideas. It’s up to you to decide whether they make sense or nonsense.”

“Let’s have them. We need every angle we can get.”

“All right. Understand that I’m not criticizing you people in any way when I say that I think the authorities rushed me here because they’d jumped to a silly conclusion.”

“What conclusion?”

“That you can undress when you’re stark naked. That you can swim without water. That you can pedal down the road without a bicycle between your legs.”

“Be more explicit,” Leeming suggested.

“You can’t be a disease when you’ve nothing to work upon. You can’t run without legs, talk without a mouth, think without brains. If that stuff is what you believe it to be, and what for all I know it really may be, it’s hamstrung, tied up, fastened down, gagged and slugged. It is therefore no more than what it appears to be, namely, a dollop of goo. Its power, if any, has ceased to be actual and become only potential. I can detect an actuality. But I can’t sit in judgment upon potentiality any more than I can read the future.”

“I see what you mean.” Leeming put on a slow smile. “You don’t give us credit for overmuch intelligence, do you?”

“I haven’t defined you as stupid. I’m merely theorizing about my own ability to help.”

“All right.” Leeming waved a hand toward the steel safe. “That’s not all we’ve got. It’s only half of it. We used the rest for a time-honored purpose: we tried it on the dog.”

“You mean you’ve actually squirted it into someone?”

“Yes, a dog, as I’ve just said.”

Harper gazed at him defeatedly. In all his life he had never picked up a thought radiating from any of the lower animals. Telepathically, the dogs and cats, the birds and bees just did not exist. They cerebrated somewhere above or below the human waveband. He could no more listen to their minds working than he could see beyond the ultraviolet.

“What’s happened to it?”

“It lived. It’s still living. Like to see it?”

“Yes, I would.”

The dog proved to be a black Labrador retriever imprisoned in a heavy cage apparently commandeered from a circus or from some nearby zoo. The cage had a steel floor, heavy steel bars on all sides and across the top, also a sliding mid-gate by means of which the animal could be pinned in one half of its quarters while the other half was being cleaned, its food and water bowls replenished. The Labrador looked incongruous and not a little pathetic in surroundings formidable enough to hold an irate rhinoceros.