The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 353
TURMOIL grew strong in the opposing brain. It had been asked the very question to which it desired the answer, as a matter of life or death. The assumed holder of the secret was seeking the solution himself.
Why did they flee?
Why did they flee?
Round and round whirled the problem and persistently threw out the only answer, namely, that the Baums had run because they'd become known and had realized how they'd become known. Therefore the mode of identification must be self-revealing. The possessed could not be fingered without sensing the touch.
Yet now that it was put to actual test there was no recognition, no dramatic exposure, no feelable contact, no touch, nothing.
What's the answer to that?
"As a guess, divide this world's bipeds into types A and B. The former is vulnerable because identifiable by some method yet to be discovered. Joyce Whittingham was of that type. So were the Baums. So might others be. But for unknown reasons type B is impervious to the power of Harper and any more who may share it. By sheer good fortune this body called Riley happens to be of that kind."
So the alien thought-stream ruminated while Harper listened, mentally thanking God that it had retained its pseudo-human role and not switched to trans-spatial double-talk.
It went on, "If this notion should be correct then salvation lies around the corner. We must learn the critical factor that protects type B and how to distinguish one type from another. Henceforth we must take over only type B. The vulnerable ones can be dealt with afterward."
We! The plural! Momentarily, in his concentration, Riley was thinking of himself as a mob!
Deep down inside himself Harper was sickened by this first-hand reminder of the ugly facts. The invader was a horde multi-millions strong. Each capture of a human body was victory for a complete army corps represented by a few drops of potent goo in which the individual warrior as—what?
A tiny sphere of hazy outline.
A fuzzy ball.
My brother's keeper!
DETERMINED to make the most of his opportunity while it lasted, Harper went on, "Someone once remarked that the only difference between those in prison and those outside is that the latter have never been found out. Possibly the Baum brothers had something on their consciences and wrongly supposed it had been discovered. So they ran like jack rabbits."
"Could be," admitted Riley, while his thoughts said, "It doesn't fit the facts. They had no cause for flight other than realization of betrayal. Harper knew them for what they were but refuses to admit it. That is at least consistent of him. He always did keep a tight mouth about his power." A pause, followed by, "Yet at the moment he lacks that power. Why? The reason must be found!"
"Anyway, what's the use of gabbing?" Harper continued, craftily spurring the other on. "Talk gets us nowhere and I have work to do."
"You can't give me one useful hint concerning McDonald?"
"No. Go look for him yourself. You'll get plenty of kudos if you nail him. Besides, he may lead you to Gould who is wanted just as badly."
"Gould?" He stared across, thinking, "Do they know or suspect that he is in this town?"
"And his contacts," added Harper, panning for paydirt. "Every one of them for the past three months."
The result was disappointing. He got fleeting, fragmentary pictures of a score of people without any means of determining who they were or where they lived or what parts they were playing in this struggle for a world.
"When Gould and McDonald have been fastened down good and tight," he went on, "we may then have time to seek afresh for Alderson's killer and try for that five thousand you covet."
He was doing fine. The reference to Alderson brought the hoped-for reaction: a fragment of memory radiated with vividness. McDonald holding Joyce Whittingham while Gould sank a needle into her arm. Joyce struggling and screaming. A police cruiser suddenly halting right behind. Alderson jumping out and making for the Thunderbug. Langley pulling a gun and dropping him before he could intervene. So Langley had done it.
Hah! That brought up something else of considerable significance. The country's entire forces of law and order, Riley included, had been alerted to capture three men, not two. Yet Riley had shown no curiosity about Langley. He had asked about McDonald. He had accepted without question the reminder concerning Gould. Any normal individual would have brought up the subject of the third quarry—unless he knew that he was dead. Did Riley know that? If so, how had he learned it? How to find out?
Daringly, he rushed the issue. "As for Langley, nobody need worry about him any more."
Riley said nothing vocally but did utter a mental, "Of course not. He's finished."
"Who told you?" asked Harper.
"Told me what?"
"About Langley?"
"I don't know what you mean. Nobody has said anything to me concerning him."
"I've just mentioned that Langley is out of the running," Harper reminded. "You made no remark, showed no surprise. So I took it for granted that it was old news to you though I can't imagine how you got hold of it."
"You're wrong," contradicted Riley, hastening to cover up a minor blunder. "It's the first I've heard of it." The information failed to sink in.
HE WAS too late. His mind had lagged seconds behind Harper's wits and his tongue had come last in the field. Despite intervening hundreds of miles, Riley had known of Langley's end the moment it occurred. He had sensed it as surely as one may gaze across a valley at night and see a distant light become suddenly extinguished.
It was a wholly alien faculty having nothing in common with any human sense. The possessed enjoyed a peculiar awareness of the existence of their own kind, could follow it blindly until they had gravitated together. By the same token, loss of awareness with respect to one particular focal point meant death far away over the horizon. Just the bare fact of death, without any details.
The same sense could detect a dreadful urgency radiated by another, the equivalent of a cry for help. It was strictly nontelepathic. A psi-factor. In effect, Riley could look afar, see the life-light emanating from one of his own kind, see it winking a summons for assistance, see it go dark. No more than that.
Perhaps it was the ultimate form of what Earth called the herd instinct. An alien protective device evolved on another world where survival sometimes demanded a rapid gathering of the clans and the lone individual went under.
Therefore, elsewhere they must have a natural enemy, a constant antagonist not strong enough to keep them in total subjection, much less eliminate them, but sufficiently redoubtable to restrict their spread and help maintain a distant world's balance of competing life forms.
What could it be? Some strong-stomached animal that craved and consumed a potent virus with all the avidity of a cat lapping cream? A creature capable of devouring a possessed body without harm to itself? Or something smaller which came like warrior ants in hordes of its own and lived by ingesting armies of the vicious?
The datum was precious enough to be worth discovering if it could be gotten. But how to get it? How could he entice it from a hostile and wary mind without giving himself away? How can one question a Venusian concerning the fauna and flora of Venus while successfully managing to uphold the pretense of regarding him as a natural born native of Earth?
Another expedition might pick up the information some day—providing it did not succumb to the same fate as the first. But if urgent problems were not solved here and now there would never be another expedition, or not one that was truly human.
Knowledge of a deadly enemy's own especial foe was there, right there across the desk, buried within a mastered brain. If only it could be extracted, the scientists could search Earth for a local counterpart fully as capable of handling this alien menace. It was a glittering prize worth far more in the long run than capture of all this world's afflicted. It meant ability to deal with the root cause instead of fooling around with the symptoms.
HARPER sought frantically for a method of making a highly dangerous move appear disarmingly innocent. He looked into Riley's questioning eyes which all along had seemed entirely normal and gave no hint of what was lurking behind.
Wetting his lips, he said, "Langley and some other fellow were trapped. They shot it out like madmen. It proved impossible to take them alive."
Riley raised an eyebrow in false surprise. "Everybody knew he was wanted but nobody's been told what for. Judging by that reaction the reason must have been mighty serious. So where's the sense in all the secrecy?"
"Don't ask me. I have no say in government policy." He made a gesture of bafflement. "You know how the top boys sometimes love to be mysterious."
The other grunted in disdain.
Now then, this was it, the critical play. It had to be done delicately, like handling dynamite. One slip and there'd be an explosion of wild action with Norris and the others caught by surprise. Thank goodness Moira was out of it.
WITH A deceitfully reminiscent air, Harper went on, "It's possible that Langley really was cracked in the head. If so, I don't like it. Everyone has pet fears and I've got mine."
"Such as what?"
"When I was a small child I was afraid of big black dogs. Now I'm older I have a violent revulsion toward mental disease. I fear loonies." He pulled a face, nerved himself and made the move. "What scares you the most?"
By God, he got it! He got it as clearly and vividly as only a lifelong terror can be pictured. What's more, he felt sure that he recognized it, not by its form but by its brutal nature. And it was here, on Earth, waiting around and ready for use. He had to tighten his mouth to prevent himself from shouting aloud.
Standing up, Riley frowned at him and asked in taut tones, "What makes you ask me that?" And his mind followed on with, "A while ago he said that talk was of no avail, that he was busy and had work to do. Yet he's been maintaining the conversation ever since. He has been prompting me repeatedly and I've had to keep avoiding his leads. Nevertheless he appears satisfied with answers that I've been careful not to give. How can that be?"
The enemy mentality was searching with swiftly mounting alarm. Telepathy was completely outside its experience, nothing like it having been encountered in its native habitat. But when an astute mind fails to solve a problem on the basis of recorded data and steps right outside of experience to seek a solution within the imagination, anything is possible.
At any moment Riley was going to conceive the formerly inconceivable.
Then would come the eruption.
Chapter Twelve
CASUALLY scratching under one arm in order to have fingers near the gun, Harper said, "I don't know why I asked you. I'm not in the least interested. If you feel touchy on the subject, you can attribute my question to mere yap. I've been doing too much of that considering the jobs waiting to be done. Go away and let me tend to my business."
He failed in his attempt to divert the thought-stream into another direction.
"He has a weapon there," it flowed on. "I have seen him carrying it many a time. He has his hand on it and cannot conceal his tenseness. He would not be like that if he knew nothing. Therefore he knows something in spite of all my attempts to hide it." A puzzled pause, then, "I came in the role of an old friend. Yet he makes ready to deal with me for what I am."
Grinning at him, Harper withdrew the hand, used it to scratch his head instead. It was a mistake.
"By the Great Black Rock of Karsim, he can hear my thoughts!"
The desk went over with a crash that shook the floor as Harper dived headlong across it and grabbed the hand which Riley was digging into a pocket. Something small, oval and metallic lay in the pocket but did not come out.
Voicing a loud oath in no known language, Riley used his free hand to try to haul Harper from the pinioned one. He was a heavy, powerful man with a huge grip that had clamped itself unbreakably on many a struggling felon. Hauling with irresistible strength he was caught unaware when Harper went willingly with the pull and helped it farther. The unexpected coöperation sent him teetering on his heels, at which point Harper shoved with all his might.
Together they fell to the floor with Harper partly on top. Riley's eyes were aflame, his features crimson as he fought to beat off his opponent long enough to get at the object in his pocket. Pinning him down was like trying to fasten an enraged tiger to the earth.
A thick-knuckled fist landed squarely on Harper's mouth and brought a spurt of blood from split lips. The sight of it created a horrible eagerness in Riley's features. He redoubled his efforts to throw the other off, heaving tremendously and keeping his gaze on the blood.
Panting as he strove to maintain his position of vantage, Harper caught a knee-thrust in the stomach, whooshed expelled breath, spat crimson drops and hoarsed, "No you don't, you—!" He released his hold on Riley's right wrist, got a two-handed grip on his neck and dug thumbs into his windpipe.
At that point Norris jumped through the doorway, gun in hand, and bawled, "Break it up! Break it up, I tell you!"
Riley heaved with maniac force, tossed Harper off his middle, kicked at his head as he rolled aside and missed. He shot upright, glaring at Norris and showing complete disregard of the gun. He made a motion toward his pocket, came down flat before he could touch it as Harper twisted on the floor and snatched the feet from under him.
Clutching each other afresh, the two threshed around with bodies squirming and legs flailing right and left. A tall filing cabinet shuddered under their impact, rocked forward, toppled and flung a shower of business papers across the office. The telephone leaped from its rack, two bottles of ink and one of paste added themselves to the mess. The combatants continued to fight fiercely amid the litter.
Rausch and two more agents appeared just as Norris firmed his lips and stepped forward determined to end the battle. The four made a concerted rush that swept Harper aside and got Riley good and tight. They dragged him upright.
SWEATING profusely, Riley stood in their grip, forced righteous indignation into his face and declaimed with plausible resentfulness, "The man's gone completely mad. He attacked me without warning and for no reason at all. There must be something wrong with him."
It was said with such a natural air that Norris had a nervy moment of wondering whether Harper had gone bad right under his nose and despite all their precautions.
"Feel in his pocket and see what he's got," suggested Harper. Sitting on the edge of the upended desk, he dabbed his bleeding lips with a handkerchief.
Norris did that, produced a grenade, examined it. "Army model, same as Baum used." He gazed hard-eyed at Riley. "Funny sort of thing for a police officer to carry around, isn't it?"
"He's not a police officer any more," Harper put in. "And he isn't Riley either. Rush him down to the Biological Research Laboratory. They need him there at once."
These words created a sudden frenzy in the prisoner. His arms were held but his legs were not. He kicked Norris in the middle, tore loose, tried to snatch the grenade. Norris bent forward doubled with agony but held onto it. Riley pulled at him, gobbling and foaming, making strange whining noises and working his features almost out of recognition.
AN AGENT slapped him. Riley rocked dazedly, let his hands hang. The agent slogged him again, a vicious crack devoid of mercy. Riley collapsed like an empty sack. He lay with eyes closed, lips shut and breathed with eerie bubbling sounds.
"I've no time for belly-kickers," said the agent.
Norris straightened himself painfully, his face white and strained. He held out the grenade. "Take it away some place where it can do no harm."
"Same applies to the owner," Harper reminded. "Tie him up so he can't choke himself with his own fingers and get him to the Bio Lab."
"Is he—?"
"Yes, he is. And it's my fault. He had entry to this office and it's cost him his soul."
"I thought you were supposed to be able to smell them coming," Norris complained. "What's the use of us guarding you for half a mile around if they can walk in like this and—"
"I knew he was coming."
"Then why didn't you tell us? I was listening-in to your conversation and thought it decidedly fishy. You were needling him for some reason or other. But seeing that you had sounded no alarm we—"
"Look," said Harper, firmly, "this is no time for explanations or postmortems. Rush him to Dr. Leeming at the Bio Lab as fast as you can make it. And don't give him the slightest opportunity to finish himself on the way there. I'm giving you fair warning that if he can't escape he'll kill himself by any means to hand. He must be delivered alive and in one piece."
"All right."
Norris signed to the others. They lifted Riley who now had steel cuffs on wrists and ankles and was still unconscious. They carried him out.
Mopping his lips again, Harper stared moodily at the wreckage of his office. He was not really seeing it, though. He was physically and spiritually shaken and striving to overcome it. Crazy circumstances had turned an old law topsy-turvy and made the reversal equally true: greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down a friend's life for himself.
Horrible, horrible!
Moira came in saying, "I left all my money behind, so I couldn't—" She halted, went wide-eyed, let go a gasp. "Why, Mr. Harper, what on earth has happened?"
"I had a fit of sneezing."
Dragging his desk upright and restoring his chair to its legs, he sat and continued to ruminate while Moira scrabbled for loose papers. Then suddenly he smacked a hand to his forehead and ejaculated, "I go dafter as I get older!"
He dashed out while Moira knelt in the middle of the floor and gaped after him.
ON THE sidewalk Norris and Rausch were standing with hands in pockets while watching two cruisers speed along the street.
Norris greeted him with, "He's gone. They'll hand him over to Leeming in no time." Then a mite doubtfully, "And I hope you know what you're doing. There'll be plenty of trouble if we've blundered in this case."
