Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (113 page)

“Were all those second-sighters as simple as we thought?” demanded
The Herald-Tribune,
paraphrasing Webb. “Or was it that they could scan frequencies just beyond the reach of most of us?”

Then followed more quotations resurrected from the past. The case of a goat that pursued nothingness across a field, then dropped dead. The case of a herd of cattle that suddenly went mad with fear, and raced around a meadow obligingly sweating their emotions into empty air. Hysteria on a turkey ranch when eleven thousand gobblers went nuts in ten minutes . . . thus providing unseen travelers with a snack. Forty-five cases of dogs that howled piteously, put their tails between their legs and belly-crawled away—from nothing! Cases of contagious insanity in dogs and cattle, “too numerous to list,” but all of them proof—asserted 
The Herald-Tribune
—that animal eyes functioned differently from all but those of a minority of human beings.

The public absorbed very word of this, wondered, feared, trembled in the night hours and by day. White-faced, jittery mobs raided the drugstores, snatched up supplies of Bjornsen’s formula as fast as they became available. Thousands, millions treated themselves according to instructions, saw the facts in all their hellish actuality, had their few shreds of doubt torn away.

In Preston, England, nobody perceived anything abnormal—until it was found that the local atomic-defence chemical plant had substituted toluidine blue for methylene blue. In Yugoslavia, a Professor Zingerson, of Belgrade University, dutifully treated himself with iodine, methylene blue and mescal, peered myopically at the sky and saw no more than he’d seen since birth. He said as much in a bitingly sarcastic article published in the Italian
Domenica del Corriere.
Two days later a globe-trotting American scientist persuaded the paper to print his letter suggesting that the good professor either take off his lead-glass spectacles or substitute ones with lenses made of fluorite. Nothing more was heard from the absent-minded Yugoslavian.

Meanwhile, in the west of America, monster tanks made tentative thrusts and occasional forays across the fighting line, clashed, blew each other into metal splinters. High-speed stratplanes, gun-spotting helicopters, highly streamlined helldivers and robot bombs criss-crossed the skies of California, Oregon and militarily important points east. Neither side yet made use of atomic explosives, each hesitant about starting a process beyond human power to end. Basically, the war followed the pattern of earlier and equally or less bloody wars; despite improved techniques, automatic and robotic weapons, despite development of armed conflict to a pushbutton affair, the ordinary soldier, the common foot-slogger remained supreme. The Asians had ten for the other side’s one, and were breeding ahead of their losses.

Distance shrank even more after a further month of battle when supersonic rockets joined the fray. High out of sight and far beyond sound, they streaked both ways across the Rockies, mostly missing their intended targets, yet still striking ferociously at tightly packed haunts of humanity. A ten-mile miss at one, two or three thousand miles range was mighty good shooting. All the way from Bermuda to Llasa, any place became liable to erupt skyward at any time, the noise following afterward.

So the skies flamed and glowed and spewed death with dreadful impartiality while men of all creeds and colors moved through their last minutes and final hours protected mentally by hope of survival and lack of knowledge of what awaited them at the next stroke of the clock. Heaven and earth had combined to create hell. The common people bore it with the animal fatalism of the lower orders, seeing with eyes more understanding than of yore, constantly conscious of a menace more invincible, more revolting than anything born of their own shape and form.

Amid surrounding wreckage, the Samaritan Hospital still stood untouched. New York had suffered enormously since the Asian invasion had commenced, and great rockets continued to arrive from the enemy’s faraway mobile launchers. By sheer good fortune, or by virtue of that occasional hiatus in the laws of chance, the hospital remained unharmed.

Scrambling out of his battered gyrocar three hundred yards from the main entrance, Graham gazed at the intervening mound of rubble blocking the street from side to side.

“Vitons!” warned Wohl, leaving the car and casting an anxious eye at the sullen sky.

Nodding silently, Graham nodded that there were a great number of the weird spheres hanging in the air above the tormented city. Every now and then, an underground giant heaved in his earthly blanket, puked a mass of bricks and stones, then roared with pain. Dozens of waiting spheres swooped down, eager to lap his vomit. Born of fire was their food, and well-cooked . . . the feast of human agony.

The fact that the huge majority of human beings were now able to see them made not the slightest difference to these ultra-blue vampires. Aware or unaware, no man could prevent a hungry phantom from seating itself on his spine, inserting into his cringing body strange, thrilling threads of energy through which his nervous currents were greedily sucked.

Many had gone insane when suddenly selected for milking by some prowling sphere; many more had flung themselves to welcome death, or had committed suicide by any means conveniently to hand. Others who still clung desperately to the remnants of their sanity walked, crept or slunk through the alleys and the shadows, their minds in constant fear of sensing that queer, spinal shiver caused by the insinuation of thirsty tentacles. The days of God’s own image were long lorgotten. Now, it was every man a cow.

That cold, eerie shiver running swiftly from the coccyx to the cervical vertebrae was one of the most common of human sensations long before the Vitons were known or suspected; so common that often a man would shiver and his companions jest about it.

“Somebody’s walking over your grave!”

There was revulsion in Graham’s lean, muscular features as he clambered hastily over the mass of broken granite and powdered glass, slipping and sliding on outcrops of small, loosely assembled lumps, his heavy boots becoming smothered in fine, white dust. His nostrils were distended as he climbed; he was conscious of that sour, all-pervading blitz-odor, a smell of men and matter crushed together and grown stale. Topping the crest, his wary eyes turned upward, he half-ran, half-jumped down the farther side, Wohl following in a tiny avalanche of dirt.

Hurrying across the cracked and pitted sidewalk, they passed through the gap of the missing entrance gates. As they turned up the curved gravel drive leading to the hospital’s front doors, Graham heard a sudden, choking gasp from his companion.

“By heavens, Bill, there’s couple of them after us!”

Looking behind, he caught a split-second glimpse of two orbs, blue, glowing, ominous, sweeping toward him in a long, shallow dive. They were three hundred yards away, but approaching with regular acceleration, and the grim silence of their oncoming was a horrifying thing.

Wohl passed him with a breathlessly sobbed, “Come on, Bill!” His legs were moving as they’d never moved before. Graham sprang after him, his heart doing a crazy jig within his ribs.

If one of those things got hold of either of them, and read the victim’s mind, it would immediately recognize him as a key man of the opposition. All that had saved them so far had been the Vitons’ difficulty in distinguishing one human being from another. Even the vaqueros of the huge King-Kleber Ranch could not be expected to know and recognize every individual beast, and, for the same reason, they had been fortunate enough to escape the attention of these ghastly superherdsmen. But now—!

He ran like hell, knowing full well as he raced along that flight was useless, that the hospital held no hope for the damned, provided no sanctuary, no protection against superior forces such as these—yet feeling impelled to run.

With Wohl one jump in the lead, and the bulleting menaces a bare twelve yards behind, they hit the front door and went through it as if it didn’t exist. A startled nurse stared at them wide-eyed as they hammered headlong through the hall, then put a pale hand to her mouth and screamed.

Soundlessly, with terrifying persistence, the pursuing spheres swept past the girl, shot round the farther comer and into the passage taken by their intended prey.

Graham caught an eye-corner vision of the luminosities as he skidded frantically around the next bend. They were seven yards behind and coming on fast. He dodged a white-coated intern, vaulted a long, low trestle being wheeled on doughnut tires from a ward, frightened a group of nurses with his mad pace.

The glossy parquet was treacherous. Wohl’s military boots hit the polish, he slipped in mid-flight, fought to retain balance, went down with a thud that shook the walls. Unable to stop, Graham leaped over him, slid along the glossy surface, crashed violently into the facing door. The door creaked, groaned, burst open.

His shoulder muscles taut with expectation, he whirled around to face the inevitable. Surprise filled his glittering eyes. Bending down, he hauled Wohl to his feet, gestured toward the end of the passage.

“By God!” he breathed. “By God!”

“What’s up?”

“They came around that corner, then stopped dead. They hung there a moment, went deeper in color, and departed as if the devil himself was after them.”

Gasping for wind, Wohl said, ”Boy, we’re damn lucky!”

“But what made them scram?” persisted Graham, looking puzzled. “It has never been known for them to give up like that. I’ve never heard of them letting up on a victim once they’ve got his number. Why did they do it?”

“Don’t ask me.” Grinning in unashamed relief, Wohl dusted himself vigorously. “Maybe we weren’t good enough for them. Maybe they decided we’d make a lousy meal and they could do better elsewhere. I don’t know—I’m no fount of wisdom.”

“They often depart in a hurry,” said a cool, even voice behind them. “It has occurred repeatedly.”

Swiveling on one heel, Graham saw her standing by the door with which he had collided. The light from the room behind made a golden frame for her crisp black curls. Her serene eyes looked steadily into his.

“Surgery’s sugar-babe,” he told Wohl, with unnecessary gusto.

Wohl gave her an appraising up-and-down, and said, “I’ll say!”

Miffed, she put a slender hand on the door as if to close it. “When you pay a social call, Mr. Graham, please arrive in seemly manner, and not like a ton of bricks.” She tried to freeze him with her glance. “Remember that this is a hospital and not a jungle.”

“You’d hardly find a ton of bricks dumped in the jungle,” he pointed out. “No, no, please don’t close that door. We’re coming in.” He marched through, followed by Wohl, both ignoring her iciness.

They seated themselves by her desk, and Wohl studied a photograph thereon. Pointing to it, he said, “To Harmony from Pop. Harmony, eh? That’s a nice name. Was your pappy a musician?”

The ice broke a little. Taking a chair, Doctor Curtis smiled. “Oh, no. I guess he just liked the name.”

“So do I,” Graham announced. He threw her the I-spy eye. “I hope it’ll suit us.”

“Us?”
Her finely arched brows rose a trifle.

“Yes,” he said, impudently. “Someday.”

The temperature of the room sank five degrees. She tucked her silk-clad legs under her chair away from his questing eyes. The whole floor quivered, and a distant roar came down from the sky. All three sobered immediately.

They waited until the roar died away, then Graham began, “Look, Harmony—” He paused, added, “You don’t mind if I call you Harmony, do you?” and without waiting for her reply, went on, “What’s this you were saying about the Vitons beating it frequently?”

“It is very mysterious,” Doctor Curtis admitted. “I don’t know of any explanation for it, and so far I’ve had no time to seek one. All I can tell you is that immediately the hospital’s staff became equipped to see these Vitons we discovered that they were frequenting the hospital in fair numbers. They were entering the wards and feeding on pain-racked patients from whom, of course, we carefully kept this knowledge.”

“I understand.”

“For some reason, they did not bother the staff.” She looked questioningly at her listeners. “I don’t know why they didn’t.”

“Because,” Graham told her, “unemotional people are just so many useless weeds from their viewpoint, especially in a place containing so much fine, ripe, juicy fruit. Your wards are orchards!”

Her smooth, oval face registered the brutality of his explanation with a look of distaste. She continued, “At certain periods, we have noticed that every luminescent sphere in the hospital has hurried away as rapidly as possible, not returning for some time. It happens three or four times a day. It has happened just now.”

“And very probably it saved our lives.”

“Possibly,” she admitted with calculated disinterest which deceived neither.

“Now, Doctor ... er . . .
Harmony
”—he wiped out Wohl’s grin with a hard glare—do you know whether each exodus coincided with some consistent feature in hospital routine, such as the administering of certain medicines to patients, or the operating of the X-ray apparatus, or the opening of particular bottles of chemicals?”

She considered awhile, apparently oblivious of her questioners intent gaze. Finally, she got up, searched through a file, dialed her telephone, consulted somebody in another part of the building. There was satisfaction in her features as she ended the call.

“Really, it was most stupid of me, but I must admit that I did not think of it until your questions brought it into my mind.”

“What is it?” Graham urged.

“The short-wave therapy apparatus.”

“Hah!” He slapped his knee, bestowed a look of triumph on the interested Wohl. “The artificial fever machine. Isn’t it screened?”

“We’ve never been able to screen it completely. We’ve tried to do so, because it interfered with the reception of local television receivers, sending checkered patterns racing across their vision plates. But the apparatus is powerful, its short waves are penetrating, it has defied all our efforts, and I understand that the complainants have had to screen their receivers.”