Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (28 page)

“I know, I know. We’re living in modern days.” He shoved a sheet of paper at his listener. “There’s a copy of my list of known Mars-Venus mutations numbered according to type and lettered for military value, if you can call it that.” He sniffed as if there were some doubts about calling it that.
“D
means dangerous.
D-plus
more so, while
I
means innocuous—perhaps. And that list may not be correct. It’s as far as we’ve got to date.”

Raven glanced rapidly down the list, asked, “So far as you know all these remain true to type? That is to say, the floaters can levitate only themselves and anything they are able to carry at the time but cannot cause levitation of independent objects? The teleports have the reverse aptitude of levitating objects but cannot lift themselves? The telepaths aren’t hypnotic and the hypnos aren’t telepathic?”

“That is correct. One man, one supernormal ability.”

Raven began to study it carefully. It read:

“So!” Smiling to himself, Raven stuffed the list into a pocket, got up, went to the door. “And they’re all under the delusion that Old Mother Earth ain’t what she used to be?”

“You said it,” Carson indorsed. “They say she’s aged, decrepit, dimwitted and hopelessly out of touch with the facts of life. She’s got nothing left but her last dying kick. You go administer said kick—and where it’ll best be felt.”

“I’ll do just that,” Raven promised, “provided I can stay in one piece long enough to take aim.” He went out, carefully closing the door behind him.

He was on his own.

The fun started right outside on the street. It could hardly have been more prompt though, naturally, it lacked the finesse that might have been evident had the organizers enjoyed longer warning and greater time for preparation. A little more elbow room and they'd have been in at the kill. As it was, the spur-of-the-moment tactic gained in swiftness what it lost in thoroughness.

Raven walked boldly through the front entrance of the Security Bureau Building, gave the come-hither sign to an aerial taxi prowling overhead. The machine did a falling turn into the lower northbound level of traffic, dropped out of that and into the sitting level, hit the street with a rubbery bounce.

The taxi was a transparent ball mounted on a ring of smaller balls designed to absorb the landing shock. There were no wings, jets or vanes. It was a latest model antigrav cab worth about twelve thousand credits but its driver hadn’t bothered taking depilatory treatment costing two fish.

Opening the door, the driver suffused his beefy features with professional hospitality, noted that the customer did not respond and made no attempt to enter. Welcome gradually faded from the mat. He scowled, scratched his blue-stubbled chin with a cracked fingernail and spoke with a cracked voice.

“See here, Mac, unless I’m imagining things you gave me the—”

“Shut up until I’m ready for you,” said Raven, still on the sidewalk and some ten feet from the cab. His eyes were watching nothing in particular; his air was that of one whose mind is elsewhere—listening, perhaps, to faraway fairy bells— and resents a disturbance.

The cabbie intensified his scowl, gave the stubble another rake in sonic imitation of a space-mechanic sandpapering the venturis. His right arm was still extended, holding the door open. Something wafted the sleeve of the arm, depressing it slightly as if an unseen breath had blown upon it. He failed to notice it.

Raven returned his attention to the cab, approached it but did not get inside, “Have you got a melter?”

“Sure! Where’d I be without one if a bounce-arm snapped?” The cabbie extracted one from the instrument board pocket. It resembled a tiny hand gun. “What d’you want it for?”

“I’m going to burn your seat,” Raven informed, taking it from him.

“Are you now? That’s quite an idea, ain’t it?” The other’s small, sunken eyes went still smaller, more sunken. A smirk broke across his leathery face, revealed two gaps in his molars. “It’s your unlucky day, Daffy.” His hand dived again into the pocket, came out holding another melter. “I happen to carry them in pairs. So you fix my pants and I’ll fix yours. That’s fair, ain’t it?”

“A pants-fixing performance would interest several scientists more than mightily,” assured Raven, “when done with instruments effective only upon metals.” He smiled at the other’s sudden look of uncertainty, added, “I was referring to the back seat of the cab.”

With that he stuck the nozzle of the midget autowelder into the seat’s upholstery, squeezed the handle.

Nothing visible came from the melter though the hand holding it gave a slight jolt. A thin spurt of strong-smelling fumes shot out of the plasticoid upholstery as something concealed within it fused at high heat. Calmly Raven climbed into the cab, closed the door.

“All right, on your way, Shaveless.” Bending forward, he put the melter back into its pocket.

The cabbie moped confusedly at his controls while the antigrav machine soared to five thousand feet and drifted southward. His heavy brows waggled from time to time with the effort of striving to think it out. His eyes continually shifted from the observation window to the rear view mirror, keeping surreptitious watch on this passenger who might be capable of anything up to and including setting the world on fire.

Taking no notice of the other’s attitude, Raven shoved an investigatory hand into the still warm gap in the upholstery, felt hot metal, brought up a badly warped instrument no longer than a cigarette and not as thick. It was gold colored, had stubby wings curled and distorted by heat. Its pointed front end bore a shining lens half the size of a seed pearl. Its flattened rear was pierced with seven needle-fine holes that served as microscopic jets.

He did not have to pull this tiny contraption to pieces to discern what was inside. It was all there and he
knew
it was there: the lilliputian engine, the guiding scanner, the minuscule radio circuit that could yell
pip-pip-pip
for hours, the match-head-sized self-destroying charge—all in a weight of something under three ounces, Yet but for its destruction it could have loaded the cab with an electronic drag-scent that the hounds would follow for endless miles and in three dimensions.

Turning, he had a look through the rear window. So many cabs, tourers, sportsters and official machines were floating around on various levels that it was quite impossible to decide whether he was still being followed visually. No matter. A mess of traffic effectively hiding the hunters could equally well conceal the hunted.

Tossing the winged cylinder into the pocket occupied by the melters, he said to the driver, “You can have that thingumbob all for your very own. It contains items worth some fifty credits
—if
you can find someone capable of picking it apart without wrecking it entirely.”

“There’s ten owing for that hole in the seat.”

“I’ll pay you when I get out.”

“All right.” The other perked up, took the winged cylinder out of the pocket, fingered it curiously, put it back. “Say, how did you know this thing was there?”

“Somebody had it in his mind.”

“Huh?”

“People who shoot gadgets through cab doors should not think of what they’re doing even if they are a quarter of a mile away in no detectable direction. Thoughts can be overheard sometimes. They can be as effective as a bellowed warning.” He eyed the back of the cabbie’s neck. “Have you ever been able to do anything without thinking about it at all?”

“Only once.” Holding up his left hand he showed the stump of a thumb. “It cost me this.”

“Which goes to show,” said Raven, and added mostly to himself, “Pity that mini-engineers aren’t also true telepaths.”

In silence they covered another forty miles still at the same altitude. Sky traffic was thinning out as they got well beyond the city limits.

“Forgot to bring my mittens,” hinted the cabbie. “Shouldn’t ought to forget my mittens. I’ll need them at the South Pole.”

“In that case we’ll call it a day partway there. I’ll let you know when.” Raven had another look behind. “Meanwhile you can put in some practice at shaking off any followers we may have. Not that I can tell whether there are any, but it’s possible.”

“Dropping the procession will cost you fifty.” The cabbie studied him via the rear view mirror, speculating as to whether he’d priced the service too high or too low. “And that includes a shut mouth, guaranteed unopenable.”

“You’re rash with your guarantees—you’ll open for them because you won’t be able to help it,” Raven informed darkly. “They have techniques involving compulsion and no cash.” He emitted a sigh of resignation. “Oh, well, by the time you talk it will be too late to matter. The fifty is yours just for delaying things a while.” He grabbed the seat-grips as the cab swayed, darted sidewise, shot into a cloud. The world became hidden by thick fog which whirled around and slid past in streaks of yellow and clumps of dirty white. “You’ll have to do better than this. You’re not radarproof.”

“Give me time. I ain’t properly started yet.”

Two hours later they thumped upon the lawn behind a long, low house. Nothing was visible in the sky except a high flying police patrol heading north. The patrol bulleted steadily onward in complete disregard of the sphere upon the lawn and whined out of sight.

The woman within the house was a little too big, a little too generously proportioned and moved with the deliberation of those weighty above the average. Her eyes were very big, widely spaced and blackly brilliant. Her mouth was large, her ears likewise, and her hair a huge, coal-black mop. Full-busted and heavy hipped, there was too much of her to suit the tastes of most men. Nevertheless, although physically no sylph, at one time or another twenty suitors had pursued her and had treated her rejections with despair. The reason: what burned within her shone visibly through those great eyes and made her surpassingly beautiful.

Giving Raven a warm, big-fingered hand, she exclaimed, “David! Whatever brings you here?”

“You would already know had I not thought it expedient to keep my mind closed.”

“Of course. She switched from vocal to telepathic means of communication solely because it came easier. “What is it?”

He responded in the same manner, mentally, “Two birds.” He smiled into the orbs that made her lovely. “The two I hope to kill with one stone.”

“Kill? Why do you have to use that dreadful thought
kill?”
A touch of anxiety came into her face. “You have been talked into something. I know it. I can feel it despite your keeping it hidden from me within your mind. You have been persuaded to interfere.” Seating herself on a pneumatic lounge, she gazed morbidly at the wall. “It is the unwritten law that we must never be tempted to interfere except with the prime motive of thwarting the Denebs. We might give ourselves away just sufficiently to frighten humankind, and frightened people tend to strike blindly at the source of their fear. Besides, non-interference lulls all suspicions, encourages them to think we are not capable of it.”

“That is excellent logic providing your premise is correct and unfortunately it isn’t. Circumstances have changed.” He took a seat opposite, studied her gravely. “Leina, we’ve slipped a little in one respect, namely, that they’re shrewder than we expected.”

“In what way?”

“Entangled in their own contradictions they became desperate enough to search the world on the million-to-one chance of finding someone able to unravel the strings. And they traced me!”

“Traced you?” Her alarm heightened. “How did they manage to do that?”

“In the only possible way, genetically, through the records. They must have classified, dissected and analyzed some ten, fifteen or twenty successive generations, wading through data on endless births, marriages and deaths, knowing nothing of what they might eventually find but hoping for the best. My determinedly conventional pseudoancestors legalized all their alliances and left a long series of documentary pointers leading straight to me. So ultimately the line became reeled in and I was the fish gasping at the end.”

“If they can do that with you they can do it with others,” she commented without happiness.

“On this particular planet,” he reminded, “there are no others. Only we two. And you are exempt.”

“Am I? How can you be sure?”

“The sorting out process has already been completed. I’ve been grabbed, but not you—maybe because you’re a female, Or perhaps you are concealed by benefit of ancestors allergic to official documents, such as one or two healthy but immoral pirates.”

“Thank you,” she said, slightly miffed.

“The pleasure’s mine,” he assured, grinning.

Her eyes keened into his. “David, what do they want you to do? Tell me!”

In full detail he informed her of what had happened, ending, “So far the Mars-Venus combine has been satisfied merely to try crippling us by degrees—the technique of long maintained and gradually increasing pressure—knowing that unless we can think up some really effective counter-action we’re going to crack sooner or later. To put it another way, they are taking a pint of our blood every chance they get. Someday we’ll be too feeble to stand, much less make defensive gestures.”