Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (32 page)

“What’s his special talent, if any?” Raven asked, having read the answers.

“I’m not certain of that. I’ve heard it said he’s a bug-talker.”

“That will do me.” He jerked an indicative thumb toward the door. “Out you go. As a neutral you may be lucky.”

“I’ll need to be,” Steen admitted. Pausing on the outer step, he added fervently, “And I hope I never see either of you again.” With that he glanced skyward, rapidly walked away.

“Notice that?” Leina became a little edgy. “He looked upward, kept his expression under control, but his mind revealed what his eyes were seeing. A helicopter coming down!” She had a quick and wary look herself “Yes, it’s falling fast. David, you talked too much and stayed here too long. What are you going to do now?” He eyed her serenely. “It seems a woman remains a woman.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you become jumpy you slide right off humanity’s neutral band. You think so hard that you forget to listen. Not everyone is an enemy.”

Mastering her anxiety, she did listen. Now that her full attention had returned she could detect the overhead jumble of thoughts radiating from the helicopter. There were four personalities in the descending machine, their mental impulses growing stronger every second and making no attempt to blank out. Pawn-minds, all of them.

“House looks quiet. Who’s that turning out of the path and into the road?”

“Dunno, but it isn’t him. Too short and lumpy.” Pause. “Anyway, Carson said there’d be a voluptuous Amazon here. We can talk to her if we can’t find Raven.” “Hear that?” invited Raven. “You’ve got an unsuspected admirer in the shape of Carson.”

“Never met him. You must have been telling him things.” She watched the window and continued to listen. The eerie mind-voices were now over the roof.

“They ought to have given us a telepath. I’ve heard that the best of them can pick a mind right out to the horizon.”

Another mind commented, “There will never be a brain-picker in the squad this side of the last trump. The public won’t stand for it. Ever since that hullabaloo about thought-police two centuries ago the rule has been that no telepath can become a cop.”

A third, with open scorn, “The public! They make me sick!”

Urgently this time, “Hey! Zip those vanes another hundred. That garden is made of dirt, not sponge rubber. Can’t you talk without closing your eyes?”

“Who’s juggling this gadget, you or me? I was landing ’em on a spread handkerchief when you were biting the bars of your playpen.” Pause. “Hold tight, here we touch!”

Dangling from twin circles of light the thing lowered past the window, pressed its balloon tires into a bed of marigolds. Four men emerged, one propping himself boredly against the stubby fuselage while the other three headed toward the house. All were in plain clothes.

Meeting them at the door, Raven asked, “What’s this? Is it something urgent?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.” The leader eyed him up and down. “Yes, you’re Raven all right. Carson wants to talk to you.” He signed toward the waiting machine. “We came in this drifter because it carries a security beam. You can speak to him direct from there.”

“All right.”

Climbing into the machine, Raven settled in its cubby hole, allowed the other to switch the beam for him.

Presently the screen livened, glowed, and Carson’s features showed themselves in it.

“That was quick,” he approved. “I’ve got ten patrols out for you and thought it might take them a week to locate you.” Adjusting a control at his end, he made his image sharper. “What has happened, if anything?”

“Not much,” Raven informed. “The opposition has made two fast passes at me. I’ve made two at them. Nobody has won a battle. At the moment we’re sitting in our corners, sucking lemons, waiting for the bell and throwing ugly looks at each other.”

Carson frowned. “That’s your end of the poker. Ours is less comfortable. In fact right now it’s white hot.”

“How come?”

“The Baxter United plant went sky-high this A.M. The news is being kept off the spectroscreens for as long as we can.”

His hands involuntarily tightening, Raven said. “Baxter’s is a pretty big place, isn’t it?”

“Big?” Carson’s face quirked. “The overnight shift, which is their smallest, was just ending. That cut down the casualties to approximately four thousand.”

“Great heavens!”

“It has the superficial appearance of an industrial disaster born of some accident,” Carson went on, his tones harsh, “which means a heck of a lot because every such incident is an accident so far as we know. We can’t tell otherwise unless a few traps are sprung.”

“Were there any in this case?”

“Plenty. Dozens of them. The place has immense strategic value and was guarded accordingly. We’re leery, see?”

“So—?”

“Ninety-five percent of our traps were blown to kingdom come. The few remaining were too damaged to function or recorded nothing of an incriminating nature. A score of patrols composed partly of telepaths and hypnos soared with the rubbish.”

“No survivors?” Raven inquired.

“Not exactly. There were some eyewitnesses. You could hardly call them survivors since the nearest of them was a mile from the plant. They say there was a sharp tremor in the ground, a tremendous whump and the entire outfit rained around. There was plenty of force behind the blast. A two-hundred-ton shunting locomotive was tossed a thousand yards.”

Raven said, “According to what you first told me, the enemy’s technique has been one of crafty but effective sabotage carried out without spectacular loss of life, in fact with minimum bloodshed. After all, there are ties of common blood.” He studied the screen, went on, “But if in grim fact this is another of their jobs it means a considerable change of sentiment. They’ve now decided to rush us along by sheer ruthlessness.”

“That is precisely what we fear,” indorsed Carson. “Drunk on his own successes, some Venusian or Martian fanatic may have decided to run ahead of public opinion on his own world and force the issue by any means to hand. We can’t stand for that!”

Nodding agreement, Raven glanced out of his cubbyhole. The helicopter’s crew were hanging around well out of earshot, talking, smoking, watching the sky. Far to the east something curved high above the horizon and vanished into the blue, leaving a thin vapor trail behind it. A space liner, outward bound.

“Why call me? Is there something special you want me to do?”

“No,” said Carson. “Not any more than indirectly. What you do is mostly up to you. I’ve given you the information, let you see what it may mean.” He emitted a sigh, rubbed his forehead wearily. “The Mars-Venus idea is to arrange natural looking misfortunes that gradually sap our power to the point where we’ve got to give in. But
real
misfortunes do occur from time to time even in the best regulated communities. Without evidence of some convincing sort we’ve no way of telling a real disaster from a manufactured one.”

“Of course not.”

“It’s a strong temptation to blame the opposition for a major accident at which they may be as aghast as ourselves. On the other hand, if we
knew
they were responsible, and which individuals had done it, we’d hang them in dangling rows. Terran citizenship wouldn’t save them. Murder remains murder any place in the cosmos.”

“Would you prefer me to drop everything while I look into this?”

Carson’s features sharpened. “Not by any means. Ending this senseless dispute somehow—if it can be ended—is more important than coping one at a time with its incidents. I’d rather you went straight ahead with whatever you’ve planned. But I also want you to make full use of any opportunity to dig up data on this blast. If you find anything, throw it to me as fast as you can.” His jaw lumped, his eyes narrowed. “I’ll then take action.”

“All right. I’ll keep my eyes open and my ears perked. You will get anything I happen to find.” Regarding the other curiously, Raven asked, “Just what was this Baxter plant doing, anyway?”

“You would ask me that!”

“Something I shouldn’t be told?”

“Well. .. well—” He hesitated, went on, “I know of no satisfactory reason why you shouldn’t. If Heraty disapproves he’ll have to get on with it. I don’t see why operatives should wander around only half informed. ” He stared hard at the screen as if trying to view his listener’s background. “Anyone close up or within hearing distance?”

“No.”

“Then keep this strictly to yourself. Baxter’s was within two months of completing a battery of one dozen new type engines employing an equally new and revolutionary fuel. A small pilot model ship fitted with such an engine, and under auto-control, did a return trip to the Asteroid Belt end of last year. Nothing has been said to the general public—yet.”

“Meaning you’re getting set for the Big Jump?” inquired Raven, strangely imperturbable about it.

“We
were.
"Carson displayed a touch of bitterness as he employed the past tense. “Four triple-engined jobs were going to be aimed at the Jovian system. Moreover, that was to be a tryout, a mere jaunt, only the beginning. If they made it without trouble—” He let the sentence hang unfinished.

“The farther planets? On to Pluto?”

“A jaunt,” he repeated.

“Alpha Centauri?”

“Maybe farther still than there. It’s much too early to estimate the limit, but it should be far away, very far.” His attention concentrated more on the other. “You don’t look particularly excited about it.”

Offering no reason for this unnatural phlegmaticism, Raven asked, “This new fuel is highly explosive?”

“Definitely! That is what has got us all tangled up. It could be an accident despite every imaginable precaution.”

“H’m!” He let it stew a moment, then said, “There’s a skewboy around here, a Venusian named Kayder. He operates the Morning Star Trading Company. I’m going to chase him up.”

“Got anything on him?”

“Only that he is reliably said to be on Terra for purposes other than trade. My informant seems to think he is Mister Big in this part of the battlefield.”

“Kayder,” repeated Carson, making notes on a pad not in view. “I’ll check with Intelligence. Even though he’s legally Terran they will have him on file as a native-born Venusian.” He finished scribbling and looked up. “Okay. Make use of that copter if you need it. Is there anything else you want?”

“One fertile asteroid for my very own.”

“When we’ve taken over a few hundreds of them I will reserve one for you,” promised Carson, without smiling. “At the rate we’re going it will be ready for occupation a hundred years after you’re dead.” His hand reached forward, made a twisting motion. The screen went blank.

For a short time Raven sat gazing at it absent-mindedly. Faint amusement lay over his lean, muscular features. A hundred years after you’re dead, Carson had said. It was a date completely without meaning. A point in time that did not exist. There are those for whom the dark angel cannot come. There are those impervious to destruction at human hands.

“Human
hands, David,” broke in Leina’s thought-stream coming from the house. “Remember that! Always remember that!”

“It is impossible to forget,” he gave back.

“Perhaps not—but don’t temporarily ignore the memory, either.”

“Why not? There are two of us here: one to remember while the other is excusably preoccupied.”

She did not respond. There was no weighty answer she could give. She shared with him a mutual function, willingly accepted, willingly faced. It must always be remembered, never mentioned.

Leina feared neither man nor beast, light or dark, life or death. Her anxieties stemmed from only one source: she was afraid of loneliness, the terrible, searing loneliness of one with an entire world to herself.

Struggling out of his cramped space, Raven stamped his feet around to ease his muscles, put Leina out of his mind. One does not attempt to soothe with sympathy a superior intelligence as powerful as one’s own. He spoke to the pilot as the waiting four came up.

“Take me to this address. I'd like to get there soon after sundown.”

Kayder came home as twilight surrendered to darkness, dumped his sportster on the rear plot, watched two men stow it in its little hangar. They fastened the sliding door, joined him in walking to the back door of the house.

“Late again,” he griped. “The cops are jumpy tonight. They’re swarming all over the sky. I was stopped three times. Can I see your license, please? Can I see your pilot ticket? Can I see your certificate of air-worthiness?” He sniffed his contempt. “Wonder why they didn’t demand a look at my birthmarks.”

“Something must have happened,” ventured one. “There’s been nothing out of the ordinary on the spectroscreen, though.”

“Seldom is,” remarked the second. “Three weeks have gone by and still they’ve not admitted that raid on—”

“Sh-h-h!” Kayder jogged him with a heavy elbow. “How many times do I have to tell you to keep it buttoned?”

He paused on the step, key in hand, searched the rim of the sky in vain hope of glimpsing a white brilliance he rarely saw. It was an aimless habit for he knew it would not appear before early morning. On the opposite side, halfway to the zenith, a pink light shone. He ignored that one. An ally it might be but that was all. Kayder thought of Mars as an opportunist sphere which had had the sense to ride the Venusian bandwagon.

Unlocking the door, he went inside, warmed his hands at a thermic panel. “What’s for dinner?”

“Venus duck with roasted tree almonds and—”

The door gongs clanged sonorously. Kayder shot a sharp look at the taller of the two.

“Who’s that?”

The other’s mind reached toward the front, came back. He said, “Fellow named David Raven.”

Kayder sat down. “You sure of that?”

“It’s what his mind says.”

“What else does it say?”

“Nothing. Only that his name is David Raven. The rest is blank.”

“Delay him a while then show him in.”

Going to his huge desk, Kayder hurriedly pulled out a drawer, took from it a small ornamented box of Venusian bogwood. He flipped its lid upward. Beneath lay a thick pad of purplish leaves mixed with dry spike-shaped blossoms. Scattered lightly over the center of this pad was what appeared to be the merest pinch of common salt. He chirruped at the box. Promptly the tiny glistening grains moved, swirled around.