Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (118 page)

Its balance disturbed by his maneuverings, the body slid gradually in its seat, flopped forward, its arms spreading across the glossy surface of the desk. Putting his hands beneath cold armpits, Graham took the pathetic weight, bore it toward a couch. Something fell to the floor, rolling metallically. Laying the body full length, Graham covered its face, composed its worn, veined hands. Then he sought for the thing that had fallen.

It was an automatic pencil—he spotted its silvery sheen close by one leg of the desk. He picked it up. Obviously it must have dropped from Farmiloe’s cold fingers, or from his lap.

The find stimulated him afresh. Memory of others’ dying ramblings made the pencil seem highly suggestive. Of course, Farmiloe might well have been struck out of this life and into the next—if he had been thus smitten—at the very moment his mind broadcasted the thought that his pencil was about to record. It was a thoroughly un-Vitonic principle to give the sucker an even break: their killings came without warning or hesitation, and they killed for keeps.

At that stage, he amazed himself by perceiving an angle he’d overlooked before, namely, that the Vitons could not read. A point so obvious had not occurred to him until that moment. The Vitons had no optical organs, they employed extrasensory perception in lieu of same. That meant that they passed sentence of death on whoever nursed dangerous ideas, or conceived the notion of recording such ideas in manner not plain to them. Possibly printed patterns on paper, or written ones, meant nothing to their alien senses; they dealt in thoughts, not in pen, pencil or typeface; they were the masters of intangibles rather than the concrete and substantial.

That meant that if Farmiloe had used this pencil it was likely that his record remained, had not been destroyed, exactly as the other messages had not been destroyed. For the second time Graham went through the drawers of the desk, looking for scratch-pads, notes, any kind of hurried scribble that might convey something significant to an understanding mind. Transferring his attention to the top, he satisfied himself that its writing-block and blotter were quite unmarked, looked through two scientific books, examining them leaf by leaf.

No luck. That left only the
Sun.
The late night final lay spread but unopened in the middle of the desk, positioned as if Farmiloe had been about to peruse it when abruptly he lost interest in the world’s news. With his photographic eyes poring over the sheet, the intelligence man breathed deeply when he found a penciled mark.

It was a thick, swiftly-scrawled ring; a slashing circle such as a man might make in a moment of frenzy—or in the very last moment of life.

“If they got him,” mused Graham, “evidently he did this after they got him. Death isn’t coincident with stoppage of the heart; the brain does not lose consciousness until several seconds later. I once saw a dead guy run ten steps before he admitted he was dead.”

His tongue licked along dry lips while he tried to decipher this message from the grave. That frantically drawn ring represented Farmiloe’s last stand: the fading brain’s stubborn effort to leave a clue no matter how crude, hurried or far-fetched.

In a way it was pathetic, for it was the professor’s dying tribute to the intelligence and deductive qualities of his own kind. It was also wacky, it could not well have been wackier—for the ring encircled the printed drawing of a bear!

In the advertising columns, depicted against an iceberg background, the animal was standing upright, its right forepaw extended in a persuasive gesture, an irritating smirk of commercial pride upon its face. The subject of its appeal was a large and ornate refrigerator beneath which appeared a few cajoling words:

“I stand for the world’s best refrigerator—you’ll find me on its door.”

“That ad writer doesn’t suffer from excess of modesty,” grunted Graham. He pored over it defeatedly. “Sleep,” he decided. “I’ll have to get some sleep, else this’ll put me among the knitters of invisible wool!”

Neatly tearing the advertisement from the page, he folded it, placed it in his wallet. Then he switched out the light and departed.

Entering a phone booth in the subway on his route home, he called police headquarters, told them about Farmiloe, gave rapid instructions between repeated yawns. Next, he tried Boro 8-19638, obtained no response, felt sleepily surprised that the intelligence department’s office did not answer. He was too far gone in fatigue to query the matter or to develop suspicions and apprehensions. They didn’t answer—so to hell with ’em.

Later, he fell into bed, thankfully closed eyes red-rimmed with weariness. One mile away, a high-altitude battery, Sperry predictor, radar early-warning outfit and listening post stood unattended in the dark, their former operators involuntarily removed from their posts. Knowing nothing of this, he tossed uneasily in fantastic dreams that featured a deserted office surrounded by a sea of living, scintillating blue through which strode the gigantic figure of a bear.

The unease he ought to have felt the night before made up for its absence with the morning. He tried to reach the intelligence department’s office on the phone, still got no reply, and this time reacted sharply. Something fishy there, bawled his refreshed and active brain—better watch your step.

He watched his step carefully a little later as the approached he building. The place looked innocent enough; it sat there with all the studied indifference of a recently set mousetrap. The nearest Vitons were well to the west, dangling from the undersides of fat clouds and apparently contemplating their navels.

He hung around for a quarter of an hour, sharing his attention between the ominous building and the menacing sky. There seemed no way of discovering what was wrong with Leamington’s phone except that of going in and finding out. Boldly, he entered the building, made toward a levitator shaft. A man emerged from the attendant’s niche at the side of the levitator bank, made toward him.

This fellow had black eyes and blacker hair stuck on a chalk-white face. He had black clothes, shoes, hat. He was a sartorial dirge.

Sliding across the parquet in easy, pantherish strides, he harshed, “You—!” and fired directly at Graham.

If the intelligence man had been one degree more assured or a fraction less edgy, it would have cost him half his noggin. As it was, he felt the bullet sections whip wickedly above his scalp as he dived to the floor. Going prone, he rolled madly, hoping to cannon against the others splayed legs before he could fire again, but knowing that he could not make it in time.

His back muscles quirked in agonized anticipation of a split bullet’s quadruple impact. There came the expected blast, sharp and hard. Nervous conditioning forced open his mouth in readiness for the yelp his throat did not utter. In that astounding moment of realization that again he had not been hit, he heard a weird gurgling followed by a thud.

A crimson-streaked face fell into the arc of his floor-level vision, a face in which eyes retained an insane glare even as their luster died away. Graham leaped to his feet with the quick suppleness of an acrobat. He gazed down dumbly at his stricken attacker.

A low groan drew his attention to one side. Jumping the body of the man in black, he sprinted to the stairs winding around the bank of pneumatic levitators, bent over the figure sprawling awkwardly at the bottom of them.

Still clinging to a warm automatic, the figure stirred weakly, moved with little, pitiful motions that exposed four blood-soaked holes in the front of its jacket. The other hand dragged itself up, showed Graham a plain, gold ring.

“Don’t worry about me, pal.” The figure’s speech came in forced, bubbling gasps. “I got down this far . . . couldn’t make it any farther.” Legs twitched spasmodically. The dying man let go his weapon, dropping it with a clatter. “I got the swine, anyway. I got him . . . saved you!”

Holding the ring in his fingers, Graham’s glance flashed between the man at his feet and the soberly dressed shape of his assailant. Outside, hell blew off its top and roared its fury, the building swayed, and nearby masonry poured down, but he ignored these sounds. What was a fatally wounded operative doing at the very entrance to the intelligence department? Why hadn’t the office answered his calls of last night and this morning?

“Leave me. I’m done!” Feebly, the operative tried to push away Graham’s hands as they tore open the gory jacket. “Take a look upstairs then get out fast!” He choked up a bloody froth. “Town’s . . . full of nuts! They’ve opened the asylums and the crazy are . . . on the loose! Get out, brother!”

“God!” Straightening, Graham knew that the man at his feet had slipped way forever. Snatching up the dropped automatic, he dashed into the nearest levitator. Masonry was still tumbling outside, but he didn’t hear it. What awaited him upstairs?

“Take a look upstairs then get out fast!”

The segmentary automatic ready in his grip, his glistening eyes gazing up the shaft, he danced with impatience as his disk soared with what seemed to be excruciating slowness.

A horrible queasiness permeated his stomach when he looked into Leamington’s New York field office. The place was a shambles. He counted them quickly— seven! Three bodies lay near the window, their cold faces indelibly stamped with the mark of diabolical fate. Their guns were in their jacket-holsters, unused. They’d never had a chance!

The other four were scattered haphazardly around. These had drawn their weapons and used them. One of the quartet was Colonel Leamington, his riddled frame retaining dignity even in death.

“ The trio by the window were settled by Vitons,” decided Graham, forcing aside his dazed horror, compelling himself as calmly as possible to weigh up the situation. “The rest killed each other.”

Momentarily oblivious of the warning to get out fast, he moved nearer the chief’s desk, studied positions, attitudes. It was not difficult to reconstruct the series of events. Evidently the pair by the door—the last to arrive—had opened up on Leamington and the other, but had not been quick enough. Leamington and his aide had swapped shots simultaneously with the newcomers. The result was a likely one; these modern segmentary missiles were blatantly murderous compared with old-fashioned, one-piece bullets.

All the bodies were those of former intelligence men; that was what had him puzzled. He roved around the room, the gun still in his fist, his brow deeply creased as he tried to find the solution.

“Looks like the luminosities first got those three by the window, leaving Leamington and another unharmed—or, at any rate, alive.” His frown grew more pronounced. “They left two alive. Why in hell should they have done that? Something mighty queer there!” He edged his buttocks onto the desk while he surveyed the bodies. “After that, three more came along, perhaps because Leamington had summoned them. They turned up, and must have realized something was wrong— for right away they started the fireworks. All five got theirs. Four flopped for keeps. The fifth crawled out and got down the stairs.” He hefted the gun, feeling its weight. “But there’s nothing to show
why
the fireworks started!”

Swallowing hard, he collected the plain, iridium-lined rings from the dead men’s fingers, dropped them into his pocket. Regardless of what had occurred, all these men had been fellow operatives, trusted workers in Uncle Sam’s most trusted service.

A bell chimed softly in one corner. Crossing to the telenews receiver, he flipped it open, saw the
Times
screen-exhibited first edition. He scanned it carefully.

Asian pressure increasing in the mid-West, yelled the
Times.
Workers’ demonstration demands that atom bomb stocks be released forthwith. European situation extremely serious. Thirty enemy stratplanes brought down in southern Kansas during war’s biggest stratosphere dogfight. Four-thousand mile lucky-shot blasts Asian dump, devastating one hundred square miles. Bacteriological warfare shortly, says Cornock. Congress outlaws Viton-worshipping cult.

The page crawled off the screen, was followed by local news. Understanding lightened his face as he read. People were running amok! All over New York, in most of the Occidental world’s great cities, people were being kidnapped, spirited into the skies, then returned to earth—and were being returned in mental condition much different from their former state.

Supersurgery in the clouds! The grip tightened upon his gun as the terrible significance burst through the haze created by the slaughter in the office. This was the master-stroke! Ultimate victory was to be made infinitely more certain, and— in the interim—still more emotional honey was to be produced with the aid of helpless recruits conscripted from the very ranks of the anti-Viton armies!

What was it that poor devil downstairs had said? “Town’s . . . full of nuts!” That was it! The three by the window had died resisting, or had been killed as unsuitable for super-surgical purposes. Leamington and the other had been snatched, operated upon, and returned. They had returned as mental slaves of their ghastly opponents. The office had become a trap cunningly designed to get the intelligence operatives—the heart of the resistance—singly, in pairs or in groups.

But the last three, arriving together, somehow had realized their peril. With that unflinching devotion to duty typical of their kind they had blasted Leamington and his companion. Sentiment had no place in fast play of this ugly description. Unhesitatingly, the three had wiped out their own chief, blowing him into swift and bloody death because quick-wittedly they knew that he was no longer their chief, he was a mind-warped instrument of the foe.

The field office had been a trap
—possibly was still a trap! The
thought stabbed through Graham’s brain, made him jump toward the window. Staring out, he noted that random clouds had drifted away leaving a clear, blue sky in which the morning sun shone brightly.

There might be a hundred, a thousand luminosities swaying around in that azure bowl, some actually drifting nearer, some guarding the trap and now about to swoop. Even Bjornsen’s wonderful formula couldn’t enable one to pick out glowing ultra-blue from a background of glowing normal-blue. The basic and the hyper shared the same sheen under the early sun, making both confusing.