Complete Short Fiction, page 155
He clutched the bag, clasp downward. He leaped forward. He struck. And struck again and again.
And again and again and again. Somewhere deep in his brain was a startled recognition that fear was making him merciless.
The driver’s head sagged, then his body crumpled. Latham stared dully down at the unconscious body; without a word, finally, he handed Miss Segill her purse. With only a glance at her dazed face, he set himself to the task of dragging the driver into the rear section.
He couldn’t do it. He felt like a rag, his muscles lifeless. The heavy body came so far, then wouldn’t budge.
In the viewer, Latham saw that the hospital’s shining roof was behind them now, receding slowly.
He leaned over tire driver, and pulled the hand accelerator hard over. The machine picked up speed.
The jar of acceleration was too much for him. Exhausted, Latham collapsed into the seat beside Miss Segill. He sat there dully for a moment, but swiftly his spirits perked up.
Safe! It hadn’t struck him, but it was so. They need only roar on eastward at top speed, get rid of the driver and—
“He’s coming to!” Miss Segill whispered.
“Give me your purse!” said Latham. “And then give me a hand with him.”
A minute later they had the bulky carcass in the rear compartment. Latham climbed over to the front, pulled a parachute out of the emergency locker—As he dumped the driver overboard, he pulled the cord.
He watched the chute open up like a great white umbrella with a human pendulum swinging below it.
The spectacle intrigued him for a moment, but then he remembered where he was. He slid into the driver’s seat, and pressed down on the highly sensitive foot accelerator.
He turned to smile at Miss Segill. His smile faded. The young woman was staring fixedly into the rearview mirror.
She must have caught his glance from the comer of her eyes. She faced him jerkily.
“There’re some air blasts behind us,” she gulped. “They look like police or something. Do you think—”
It didn’t, Latham reflected bitterly, need any thought.
He was conscious of a sense of resignation, as he studied the air blasts. There were seven of them. All were long and black, with the very stubby wings of the extremely fast, ultramodern police patrol craft.
Even yet it was hard to believe that they were really police. With abrupt decision, Latham flicked on the short-range radio, about which cynical drivers had often said: “I’d rather lean out and yell!”
Latham smiled grimly at the recollection, then said into the mouthpiece:
“What do you want?”
A young man’s face formed on the dashboard screen.
“You!” he said.
“Do you realize that I am an agent of Congress, acting for the president of the United States?”
The answer came coolly: “We don’t recognize either Congress or the president. You’d better surrender.”
Latham was silent. He felt the shock gathering inside him again. The young man looked American; his voice, his accent sounded so colloquial that the words he spoke seemed but part of a play, one of those impossible dramas along the lines of “It Can’t Happen Here!” so popular a few years before.
An earlier thought came back, stronger now, more dismaying: What did it mean? The shreds of explanation that had been given him, about there being a group of men who consciously thought of themselves as rulers of the world, seemed inadequate now.
Because Americans wouldn’t give allegiance to any group like that. It wasn’t a matter for argument. They just wouldn’t, that was all.
There must be a deadlier explanation, something infinitely threatening, something—
The stupid thing was that, while, by capture and—methods—they would find out what he knew, yet killing him wouldn’t prevent the CISA from suspecting the hospital. His report, for instance, was due this very night.
What did the thirteen rulers hope to gain?
A moment longer, Latham stared at that youthful, cool-voiced traitor; then with a gesture broke the connection. He switched the indicator over to “Telephone,” dialed the Washington number of the Committee Investigating Subversive Activities that he had tried to get from the restaurant.
He felt no particular surprise when the face of Codred appeared on the screen. The man said blandly:
“What you are confronted with, Dr. Latham, is organization. The radios on all Taxis-Air and air blasts of this city do not connect with the nearest exchange. They connect with our own city’s automatic center. For today only, or rather, so long as you are at large, all calls to Washington will be switched to me and my staff here. We let the harmless ones go through, but will naturally stop you every time. You have been amazingly agile, but, of course, you cannot succeed.”
“I’m not caught yet,” Latham said grimly.
He suppressed the impulse to ask some leading questions, hesitated, then broke the connection, No vital information would be imparted to him at this stage; and it was not the moment to listen to lectures that could have no result except to throw him off guard.
With narrowed eyes, he studied the air blasts. They were quite close now, two of them forging a little ahead of his craft, all pressing nearer.
Latham had a sudden mental picture of a newsreel he had seen some years before, in which three police craft were shown catching an aircar.
Catching it, grappling onto the standardized grapple rails—to be without which was an offense subject to heavy fine—and swiftly dragging it to the ground.
Theoretically, a driver with his lightning vision should be able to dart rings around pursuers by the mere ability to see faster what was happening around him. Theoretically, that was. Practically, the armored police ships need only cling boldly to their courses, and let him smash his lighter machine against their impregnable hides. Nevertheless—
He swung around on Miss Segill. “Hang on,” he shouted. “It’s going to be a wild ride. I—”
He stopped, and stared at her. Her face was changing. It was not a subtle transformation. What was missing was the dominating expression of love adoration and—If he had been in the back seat with her, he could have frustrated her action. As it was, there was nothing to do but squirm with the beginning of a halfhearted move to climb towards her.
She had raised her skirt, exposing a considerable reach of gleaming leg, around which was a holster with a tiny gun in it. His gun!
She drew the gun, and pointed it at Latham.
“I think,” she said coolly, “that at this point I can safely do my bit in this business. You will put up your hands, doctor, and keep them up until you’re told otherwise.”
The plump man at the dinner table made an interrupting gesture with his hand.
“Just a minute, doctor. We’ve all heard some of the details of this story, of course, though the press version was curiously garbled. But this Miss Segill who held you up with your own gun—she’s the gorgeous blonde sitting beside you there—your wife?”
Latham said: “Naturally, at that moment I knew what the explanation was for everything. The amazing thing was that I, with my knowledge, shouldn’t have guessed earlier. I knew I had not misread Miss . . . er . . . Segill’s feelings for me, nor her character. Just when they got at her it’s hard to say, probably the night before. Her instructions must have been to take a hand at a critical moment, and she undoubtedly didn’t become aware of those instructions until that moment.
“Anyway, looking at her there in the Taxi-Air, I realized then an immensely potent artificial control had been put over her, and what it was.”
The plump man said: “The h drug.”
“The funny thing about that,” Latham went on, “is that, like so many potential world-controlling devices of the last century—the submarine, dive bomber, radio X and so on was invented in the United States. The inventor used it as an aid in the study of the mind, and not one of his students thought of it as a means to world power. I was one of those students, and I know.”
“We simply don’t go in over here for ideas like that.” the other man agreed. “And—”
The hostess cut him off. She had a vague remembrance that the plump man was somebody important, but it didn’t matter. The greatest inside story of the decade was being told, and told at her table. She was M-A-D-E, in capital letters.
“Go on, doctor!” she said, and her voice was a reptilelike hiss.
Latham was led along the familiar hospital corridor by a dozen men of the patrol craft. He did not look at Miss Segill, except to note once that some of her jaunty confidence was fading, a puzzled look coming into her face.
Codred met them at the door of the room. He was smiling gently, but he said nothing, simply stepped aside and bowed Latham past.
The moment he was in, Latham turned, and watched feverishly as Codred admitted Miss Segill and four of the guards. Latham calculated ferociously: Four! That ought to be enough.
But they mustn’t be allowed to leave the room.
There must have been an intent expression on his face, because Codred shut the door, then said:
“They’re here just in case you get tough. We abhor scenes but”—he smiled broadly—“we prepare for them.
“As for Miss Segill”—he faced the girl—“the effect of the h drug should be wearing off her any time. So just hand me that gun, please, Miss—Thank you.”
Once more he turned to Latham “As you probably know, doctor, the effect of h is not permanent. The initial dose must be quite strong, and it must be administered under controlled conditions. Afterwards, a very diluted form will sustain the slave status it sets up in the brain. We use the city water system of course. However, no one drinking the diluted form only would be even remotely affected. This is unfortunate in some respects, but to use more would have deadly results on the mass already under control.
“The necessary rotelike commands are broadcast over the public address system. Is everything clear now?”
It wasn’t, not everything. He felt cold and stiff and deadly. The incredible, fantastic, hellish scoundrels, using a poison like that so casually and monstrously. Why, experiments had shown—
With a pure effort of will, Latham pulled himself together. There were a number of things that it was vital he know. And calmness, however titanic the strain of maintaining it, was necessary.
With a conscious will, Latham turned away from Codred, and stared at the dozen men who sat before separate desks along one end of the room. In spite of himself, then, he glanced at the gun.
It was mounted between the sixth and seventh desks; and it held him because—he saw with a start—it was not a gun. It was an electrode of very intricate design. It projected from a metal cabinet which rested on a gleamy mobile base.
Heavy cables ran from the cabinet into the floor.
Latham groaned softly as he recognized where he had first seen a similar machine. In a big commercial laboratory, a model instrument used by the American inventors for atomic investigations. They hadn’t even tried to develop it as a weapon.
Other people, with a different mind slant, had seen the murderous possibilities.
Very carefully Latham walked forward, out of the direct path of the gun, and returned his attention to the rulers of the world.
They had been watching his examination of the electrode with individual degrees of interest varying from indifferent awareness to sharp, curious stares.
More thoughtful now, Latham studied them. He remembered their faces from that first quick glance he had given them at half past eleven that morning. But certain facts hadn’t struck him then.
There were not, he saw now, as many Germans as he had believed. Only three. The four others that he had mistaken for Germans were respectively a Pole, an outsized Frenchman, a Spanish Jew and an Englishman.
Of the remaining five men two looked French, one unmistakably English, one Great Russian and one Greek. Actually, of course, these men were ultra national, beyond all loyalties to any flag.
Codred, he had already decided, was an American.
It was the Greek who broke the silence, who said in a deep bass voice:
“Enough of this. Inject h into the prisoner. It is important that he make a carefully doctored report to Washington by tonight.” Latham had expected that he was to receive the h drug. But not so quickly.
He had to have more information first.
He opened his mouth to say something, anything, that would give him some, at least, of the facts he craved. Before he could speak, Codred’s voice came resonantly from behind him:
“Not so fast, Michael, not so fast. A man who receives h knowing what it is, must have his mind reduced to a condition where it feels utterly helpless against the forces that are attacking it.
“We have shown Dr. Latham that he cannot escape us. Cannot! Literally cannot. This will have had a profoundly disconcerting effect. But we must not forget that we are dealing with a psycho-medician. Therefore—”
His voice paused tantalizingly. He came around from behind Latham, smiling sardonically.
“Let me explain, doctor,” he purred, “just what you are up against. We’re a very old organization, very old. Our leader group, which you see before you, can trace itself back to the year 3417 B.C. Whenever a member dies, the survivors after careful consideration, elect a replacement. With such extraordinary insight has this been done that our existence has only been suspected occasionally, never actually believed in.
“In the last six hundred years, no less than twelve kings have held office on our board of rulers. Until recently no war was fought in Europe that did not have our sanction. Napoleon was a usurper, but he didn’t last long; even England helped to down him.
“For many generations now, it has been our intention to bring England under our control. England is our great mistake. We dismissed her from our early calculations, completely underestimated her possibilities. All our troubles have originated from that basic error of judgment.
“As a direct result of England’s independence, America came into being, and, more indirectly—though I could trace every step for you beyond question, were I so minded—Soviet Russia.
“England alone, of course, would in recent generations have been helpless. Twice now, America has thwarted our will to bring England into line. It became apparent that we must first and finally neutralize the United States.
“We came to America under great difficulties. That incredible immigration law had to be gotten around by means of this hospital. Through the hospital, we slowly built up our control over this one city. It has been an exhausting process, but now we are ready.
“Starting today we expand. When you return to Washington, it will be as our enslaved agent. We anticipate that you will be able to make the highest contacts, and will inject h into hundreds of key administration minds.
“America will not again interfere with our plans. Now”—his voice, which had risen to a harsh pitch, quietened—“have you anything to say while you are still able to think for yourself?”
It was a hard question to answer immediately. Hard because rage was back, choking, clogging his throat. He felt, literally, speechless. The cold-blooded account of an organization that, from time immemorial, had used entire peoples as pawns in an involved play of power, whose members felt not a twinge of conscience at the thought of enslavement of hundreds of millions—words could not but be inadequate.
Besides, the important thing for him was: Had Codred been telling the truth?
With a remorseless precision, Latham went over in his mind the shifting design of expression that had marked Codred’s face as he talked.
It had fooled him before, when the man was acting as his guide, and he mustn’t let it do so again. True, he had paid no particular attention to Codred then but—
What counted in reading a mind from the subtle variations of the natural physical reactions was to miss no response of a vital organ. The older a person, the easier, because blood vessels came to the surface in the nose, in the cheeks, and generally.
The bloodstream was overwhelmingly the most expressive. Muscles rippled under more or less rigid conditions, but blood was a fluid, capable of a thousand subtle transformations. A score of glands pumped their juices into it to balance every emotion, every thought.
Veins contracted, arteries swelled, obscure blood vessels dilated and changed color, always for a reason. The man, who could connect cause and effect, as he could, could almost literally read thoughts.
And there was no doubt. Codred had not lied. The facts were as stated.
One more thing: He had to know which desk controlled that electrode. Utterly impossible to risk that going off.
After that—action!
Latham began: “Yes, I have a few words to say: words that will puzzle you at first because they involve a discussion of the different approaches to the same subject of two types of minds.
“You are the ruler type. Your interest in a drug like h has, I venture to say, never extended beyond a careful examination of its utility in serving your ends.
“But the drug h is merely a simple, positive form of hypnotism. It affects the same region of the brain.
“You would be absolutely amazed how many things the late, great Dr. Nanning and his students, of whom I had the honor to be one, discovered about hypnotism and control of the mind through the use of the h drug. I say amazed deliberately because I feel confident that none of you has felt the slightest interest in the purely scientific aspects of h.
“Do you know, for instance, that hypnotism is nothing less than control of a second personality, and that this extra being is always consciously aware of the first, though the reverse is not true.
“When you inject h, you release the second personality, and because of its slavelike attributes, are able to control it.
“What will astound you is that, not only does every human body contain the two personalities, that is the conscious and the second, but also a third. This was discovered by the early French mesmerists, notably Coue, though only h makes control of this third personality easy. When I tell you that this third personality is aware of, and can supersede, both of the other two, you will—”
