Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (125 page)

Graham’s eardrums bounced against each other. Displaced air almost tore him from his precarious saddle. The entire apparatus wrenched at its fastenings and groaned. While the high-up mess of wavicles went haywire, fierce rays struck him like vicious sunburn, forcing him to close his eyelids to protect his pupils.

But he couldn’t keep quiet, he wouldn’t keep quiet. This was the end of the trail, this was his lone half hour if never he enjoyed another, and, above all, this was retribution. He whooped like a charging Sioux as deftly he swung the funnel through a ninety degree arc and blasted two scintillating menaces dropping upon him from above.

Now it was clear how they’d set off those tanks in Silver City. A dozen of them, or twenty, or perhaps fifty had committed suicide, plunging into the tanks, merging as they struck. That merging had destroyed their natural balance, collectively converting them into a super-detonator. They had in their ancient lore a secret only recently discovered by their human slaves: the secret of violent disruption when energy-forms—radioactive or Vitonic—exceed critical mass.

That silver nitrate had received the world’s worst wallop, a sock in the neck that made the atom bomb look piddling. And that great black finger pointing to where Silver City’s souls had gone had been a monstrous column of maddened atoms seeking new unions as they splashed upward.

Whirling his turntable again, he threw a free sample of hell at an oncoming sextet, saw them dispel their energy in visible frequencies and cease to be. These Vitons could afford to be nonchalant about stuff coming at them along Lissajous’ complicated path, for nature had conditioned them to the solar output. They could stand it. Maybe they liked it. But hyperbolic:
that
corkscrewed into their very guts!

There was a tremendous array of luminosities collecting on the extreme limit of the northern horizon. He tried to reach them with his beam, found he was unable to discern any result, concluded that they must be beyond effective range. More man-made volcanoes belched in the east. The air held smells of ozone, burning rubber and wet cement. Voices made indistinct by distance were shouting all around.

He thought of America’s grounded air fleet, ten thousand fast, efficient machines that dared not ascend so long as there were luminosities to take control of the pilots’ minds and set one against another. That was going to be altered pretty soon. Winged warriors were going to darken the sky, while below them people spoke the sweetest word of any man’s war—“Ours!”

So far, he’d wiped out only the reckless, lazy or unwary, but now they knew their danger. A mass attack was about to be made, an onslaught in which the Vitons would demonstrate once and for all the fullness of their united power. They would bullet toward him in companies, battalions, brigades, in numbers far greater than he could slaughter. They were going to blot him off the face of the disputed Earth, and the projector along with him. The end was near, but it had been a great run.

Searching the sky, he saw a squadron of Asian stratplanes zooming eastward with the calm confidence of things in cahoots with God. Puffballs and sparks sprang into being behind and beneath them. He wondered whether their fanatical pilots had witnessed the fate of some of their supposed ancestral spirits, concluded that they had not.

The news ought to have got around by now. It would be all over the New World, and probably Europe had full details. Europe would hold on, knowing that victory was now a matter of time rather than doubt. Maybe one of the other groups also had succeeded. Anyway, it didn’t matter—this success at Faraday’s was humanity’s triumph.

He ceased his pondering when the faraway cohorts soared upward. They made so huge and fantastic an aurora that it became hard to conceive their complete invisibility to ordinary, untreated eyesight. They were a bright blue myriad, a veritable army whose numbers filled the northern sky with a panorama of glowing horror, a heavenly host not born of heaven and long rejected by hell. The speed of their advance was almost incredible.

Even as Graham braced himself for what was coming, a small patch in the enemy’s center darkened to purple, went orange, puffed out of existence. It had him puzzled for a moment, then he remembered—Yonkers.

“Good old Steve!” he roared. “He’s done it. Give them hell, Steve!”

Shooting power along, he sprayed the rapidly swelling horde. Blue switched to purple and orange, became nixed. An untouched section detached itself from the main body, fell headlong on Yonkers, some changing color as they fell.

The rest shot vengefully toward Graham. He knew what was going to happen, sensed it from the way in which they gradually concentrated themselves as they sped along. Up to the last moment he let them have it hot and strong, canceling them wholesale with furious words and lethal impulses. Then, as they merged suicidally, he reached the pit in four frantic leaps, embraced the pole, let the force of gravity snatch him down.

Ghastly, glowing blue momentarily wavered and undulated over the mouth of the shaft as he dropped at breath-taking speed. The whole sky had become a bowl of glossy azure. Then, abruptly, it flamed unbearably. A brain-searing roar as of the cosmos being ripped to tatters smashed into his already maltreated eardrums. The slide-pole danced like a juggler’s wand.

Helplessly, he was flicked off the pole, fell into shaking depths. The shaft quivered from base to mouth, its walls crumbled, earth, stones, lumps of concrete poured after him in a deadly rain. Something bigger and blacker than the rest came unstuck, fell ponderously through general blackness, landed dully on yielding flesh.

Graham emitted a queer sigh. His mind wandered off, a barge of funereal ebony floating in sooty seas.

It was comfortable in bed, so comfortable that the illusion was well worth preserving. Shifting his head contentedly, Graham felt a sharp pain lance through it, opened his eyes.

Yes, he was in bed. He waggled his fingers, felt around. Definitely a bed. Amazedly, he surveyed a white sheet, studied a picture on the opposite wall. It was
A Stag At Bay.
He extended his tongue at it.

A chair creaked at his side; he winced as he turned his head to look, discovered Wolds broad-shouldered figure.

“Good evening, Rip van Winkle,” greeted Wohl, with unctuous politeness. He indicated a clock and a calendar. “It’s ten in the evening of Thursday. For three days you’ve been deaf, dumb, dopey and doubled up. In other words, you’ve been your natural self.”

“Is that so?” Graham’s snort was a little less fiery than of yore. He glared toward the stag. “Did you hang that blasted thing? If so, it isn’t funny.”

Wohl looked at it, endured the pain of thought, then said, “Haw-haw!”

Struggling upward, Graham propped himself on one elbow, ignored his throbbing cranium. “Get me my rags, you ignorant flattie—I’m going places.”

“Nothing doing.” Wohl’s broad hand pressed him gently down. “This is one time when I give orders and you take ’em.” He made the declaration with unashamed relish, and went on. “Those luminosities devastated an area a couple of miles in diameter, killed many observers. It took us twelve hours to locate your funk-hole and dig out the lump of catmeat that was you. So lie down and be at peace while Uncle Art tells you some bedtime stories.”

Producing a printed newspaper, he opened it, gave a brief sketch of the day’s events, reading in a voice that fairly gloated.

“Mayor Sullivan says city now adequately protected. Electra’s hundred scores new high for one day’s projector output. Two more Asian stratplane squadrons land at Battery Park and surrender.” Glancing at his listener, he remarked, “That’s merely local stuff. An awful lot has happened while you snored on like a fat hog.”

“Humph!” Graham felt peeved. “What about Koenig?”

“He lost two operators when Yonkers took it on the chin. A lot of surrounding observers went west, too. But the rest are all right.” Wohl reversed his paper. “Listen to this,” he invited. “Nebraska line straightened. Our armor pushes on against weakening opposition. Rebellion spreads through Asian ranks as first transmitters reach front and destroy overhead luminosities. Pacifist Asians seize Chungking and start manufacture of anti-Viton beams. Europe pressing eastward at fast pace. Washington expects Asian offer of armistice and aid in wiping out luminosities.” He rolled up the paper, shoved it under Graham’s pillow. “The war’s as good as over, thanks to you.”

“Nuts!” said Graham, sourly. He lifted himself again. “Get me my cover-ups. I’m not a thieving louse like you—I don’t snitch blankets.”

Wohl came to his feet, stared in mock horror. “By God, Bill, you look awful. You look real bad. I guess you need a doctor.” He moved toward the door.

“Don’t play the fool,” shouted Graham. Hurriedly he sat up, held his head together until it decided not to fall apart. “Fetch me my pants before I get out and paste you one. I’m beating it out of this dump.”

“You don’t know what’s good for you,” Wohl reproved from the doorway. “You’re in a new underground hospital—it’s now the Samaritan.”

“Eh?”

“The Samaritan,” Wohl repeated. He leered at the stag.

“Ah!” Graham promptly lay flat, produced a hollow groan. “I feel terrible, Art. Maybe I’m dying. Go fetch me a doctor.”

“Well!” said Wohl. He struck an attitude, protruding his buttocks and holding an imaginary bow. “Look—Cupid, me!” Then he went out.

She came in presently, sat down, put on her best bedside manner, and inquired, “How’re you feeling now?”

“As usual—with my hands.” Putting out a hand, he took hold of hers.

She dumped it back firmly. “This is no place for that sort of thing.”

“You’ve never given me the chance anyplace else,” he pointed out.

Saying nothing, she stared at the stag without seeing it.

“Hell of a thing,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“That.” He nodded toward the picture. “Somebody’s sarcasm, I guess. Yours?” “Mine?” She was patently surprised. “Nonsense. If you don’t like it, I’ll have it moved.”

“Please do. It reminds me too much of me. Too much of everybody, if it comes to that.”

“Indeed? Why?”

“At bay. We’ve been at bay back to the dawn of history. First without knowing it, then with full knowledge. It’s nice to know that’s over. Maybe we’ll now have time for fun. You helped with the one, you can help with the other.”

“I am not aware of having given any valuable assistance,” she said, primly.

“You tipped us about Beach, and therapy cabinets, and Farmiloe. We’d still have been chasing shadows but for you." He sat up, gazing at her. “I’m not chasing any more shadows. I’ve had enough.”

Making no reply, she turned her head sidewise, looked upward meditatively. He drank in the curve of her cheekbone, the sweep of her lashes, and knew she was conscious of his gaze.

“Up there, Harmony, are the stars,” he continued. “There may be people out that way, people of flesh and blood like us, friendly people who’d have visited us long ago but for a Viton ban. Hans Luther believed they’d been warned to keep off the grass. Forbidden, forbidden, forbidden—that was Earth.” He studied her again. “Every worthwhile thing forbidden, to those folk who’d like to come here, and to us who were imprisoned here. Nothing permitted except that which our masters considered profitable to themselves.”

“But not now,” she murmured.

“No, not now. We can emote for ourselves now, and not for others. At last our excitements are our own. Two are company, three are none—especially when the third’s a Viton. Has it struck you that in the truest sense we’re now alone?”

“We—?”

Her lace turned toward him, her eyebrows arched.

“Maybe this isn’t the place,” he observed, “but at least it’s the opportunity!” He bent her across his lap, pressed his lips on hers.

She pushed at him, but not too hard. After a while, she changed her mind. Her arm slid around his neck.

Astounding,
April, 1956

As nearly as an Andromedan thought form can be expressed in print, his name was Harasha Vanash. The formidable thing about him was his conceit. It was redoubtable because justified. His natural power had been tested on fifty hostile worlds and found invincible.

The greatest asset any living creature can possess is a brain capable of imagination. That is its strong point, its power center. But to Vanash an opponent’s mind was a weak spot, a chink in the armor, a thing to be exploited.

Even he had his limitations. He could not influence a mind of his own species armed with his own power. He could not do much with a brainless life form except kick it in the rumps. But if an alien could think and imagine, that alien was his meat.

Vanash was a twenty-four carat hypno, jeweled in every hole. Given a thinking mind to work upon at any range up to most of a mile, he could convince it in a split second that black was white, right was wrong, the sun had turned bright green, and the corner cop was King Farouk. Anything he imposed stayed stuck unless he saw fit to unstick it. Even if it outraged common sense, the victim would sign affidavits, swear to it upon the Bible, the Koran or whatever, and then be led away to have his head examined.

There was one terminal restriction that seemed to have the nature of a cosmoswide law; he could not compel any life form to destroy itself by its own hand. At that point the universal instinct of self-survival became downright mulish and refused to budge.

However, he was well able to do the next best thing. He could do what a snake does to a rabbit, namely, obsess the victim with the idea that it was paralyzed and completely unable to flee from certain death. He could not persuade a Bootean
appolan
to cut its own throat, but he could make it stand still while he performed that service.

Yes, Harasha Vanash had excellent basis for self-esteem. When one has walked into and out of fifty worlds one can afford to be confident about the fifty-first. Experience is a faithful and loving servant, always ready with a long, stimulating draught of ego when required.

So it was with nonchalance that he landed on Earth. The previous day he’d given the planet a look-over and his snooping had set off the usual rumors about flying saucers despite that his ship resembled no such object.