Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (37 page)

“And what was the response?”

“Thanks for the information.”

“Nothing more than that?” He lifted an eyebrow.

“Nothing,” assured Raven. “What else do you expect?”

“Something more emotional and less coldly phlegmatic,” Mavis interjected. “You males are all the same, just so many brass buddhas. Why can’t you stand on a table and scream?”

“Would it do any good?” asked Charles.

“Don’t you get logical with me,” she snapped. “It would take some pressure off the glands. I possess a few glands, in case you don’t know it.”

“That is a subject about which I am passably informed,” said Charles, pointedly. “Moreover, I have glands myself. One of them makes me fat and inclined to laziness, but I appear to lack the one that is bothering you at the moment.” He pointed a plump digit. “There’s the table. Climb up and let go a few shrill bellows. We won’t mind.”

“I am not in the habit of bellowing,” said Mavis.

“There you are!” He threw a glance at Raven and gave careless shrug. “Women for you. Cold and calculating. Can’t take the steam off their zip-bits.”

Mavis promised, “Someday I’ll trim your wings, Porky.”

“Fancy me with wings.” Charles laughed until his paunch trembled. “Diving and soaring like an obese angel. Or fluttering like a fat moth.” He wiped his eyes, laughed again. “What an imagination!”

Producing a tiny, lace-edged handkerchief, Mavis wept into it very softly and quietly.

Charles stared at her aghast. “Well, what have I said wrong now?”

“You voiced a stimulator.” Going over to Mavis, Raven patted her shoulder. “There, there! It isn’t right to remain here if memories are growing too strong for you. It isn’t right to stay if you want out. We can find another pair who—”

She whipped down the handkerchief and spoke fiercely. “I don’t want out. I’ll go when it’s time and not before. What sort of a person do you think I am? Can’t a girl have a good cry if she wants to?”

“Sure she can, but—”

“Forget it.” She stuffed the handkerchief into a pocket, blinked a couple of times, smiled at him. “I’m all right now.”

“Does Leina ever do that?” asked Charles, looking at Raven.

“Not while I’m around.”

“Leina was older when . . . when—” Mavis let the sentence go unfinished.

They knew exactly what she meant.

Nobody else could have guessed it, not even the Denebs, but these few knew.

They were silent quite a while, each busy with entirely personal thoughts that remained hidden behind mental shields. Charles was the first one to cease ruminating and become vocal.

“Let’s get down to business, David. What are your plans and where do we come in?”

“The plans are elementary enough. I want to find, identify and effectively deal with the opposition’s key man on Venus, the one who decides ways and means, settles all disputes, generally rules the nationalistic roost and is indisputably the big boss. Take away the locking-stone and the whole arch falls down.”

“Sometimes,” qualified Charles.

“Yes, sometimes,” Raven agreed. “If their organization is half as good as it ought to be they’ll have a deputy leader held ready to replace him if necessary. Maybe more. Then our task will be more complex.”

“And after all that there will still be the Martians,” Charles suggested.

“Not for certain. It all depends on how they react to whatever happens here. Mars-Venus liaison is to a great extent boosted along by mutual encouragement. Each keeps giving the other the loud hurrah. Take away the applause and the act doesn’t seem so good to the remaining partner. I’m hoping they’ll pipe down when Venus drops out.”

“One thing I don’t understand.” Charles was thoughtful. “What’s to stop Terra paying back the insurgents in their own coin? Sabotage and all that stuff is a game at which two can play.”

Raven told him.

“Ah!” He had another rub at his chins. “The local boys can make a mess of what they regard as other people’s property while the Terrans can louse up only what they consider their own.”

“It’s no business of ours,” put in Mavis. “If it were we would have been told as much.” Her eyes were shrewd as they examined Raven. “Have you been requested to interfere by anyone other than Terrans?”

“No, lady, and it’s not likely I shall be asked.”

“Why not?”

“Because large as the issue may loom in this minor corner of the galaxy, it is small and pitifully insignificant by comparison with bigger issues elsewhere. Things look different from far, far away.” His expression showed that he knew he was telling her nothing with which she was not already familiar. “And the accepted rule for the likes of us is to use our own initiative with regard to small matters. So I am using mine.”

“That is good enough for me,” approved Charles, sitting up and easing his stomach. “What d’you want us to do?”

“Not very much. This is your bailiwick and you know more about it than anyone. Give me the name of the man you consider likeliest to be the inspiration behind this separatist tomfoolery. Give me what data you’ve got on his talent and other resources and tell me where I can find him. Cogent information is what I need most. Please yourself about offering any more help.”

“I propose to offer more.” Charles glanced sidewise. “How about you, Mavis?”

“Count me out. I intend to follow Leina’s example and keep watch. After all, that’s what we’re here for. Somebody has to do it while you mulish males go gallivanting around.”

Raven said, “You’re dead right. Keeping watch is all-important. I’m thankful for you fair maidens. Us bullheads are left free for pernicious interfering.”

She pulled a face at him but offered no comment.

“The setup here is amusing,” Charles informed. “We have an orthodox Terran governor who utters strictly orthodox sentiments and remains diplomatically unaware that the illegal underground nationalist movement already is doing ninety percent of the bossing. The big boss in this movement, the figure the rank and file look up to, is a large and handsome rabble-rouser named Wollencott.”

“What’s he got that others haven't?”

“The face, figure, and personality for the part,” explained Charles. “He is a native-born Type Six Mutant, that is to say, a malleable, with an imposing mane of white hair and an equally imposing voice. Can make himself the perfect picture of a tribal joss any time he wants. He can also speak like an oracle—providing that he has first learned the words by heart. He’s incapable of thinking out the words for himself.”

“All that doesn’t sound so formidable,” Raven offered.

“Wait a bit. I’ve not finished. Wollencott is so well-suited to portray the dynamic leader of a patriotic cause that he might have been especially chosen for the part. And he was!”

“By whom?”

“By a hard character named Thorstern, the
real
boss, the power behind the throne, the lurker in the shadows, the boy who will still be around long after Wollencott is hung.”

“The puppet master, eh? Anything extra-special about him?”

“Yes and no. The most surprising feature is that he is not a mutant. He hasn’t one paranormal aptitude.” Charles paused, ruminated a moment, went on. “But he is ruthless, ambitious, cunning, a top-grade psychologist and has a high-powered, quick-moving brain good enough to serve a thousand monkeys.”

“A pawn with high I.Q.”

“Exactly! And that means plenty when redoubtable talent doesn’t necessarily have redoubtable brains. Given first-class wits, even a pawn can pull the strings of a dopey telepath; his mind can move just that fraction faster than the telepath can pick it up and react.”

“I know. I’ve listened in to one or two such cases. It’s the easiest thing in the world for a mutant to fall into the error of underestimating an opponent merely because he is ordinary. Besides, power is never sufficient unto itself; there must also be the ability to apply it. That’s where the Denebs excel. They make full use of what they’ve got.” Becoming restless, Raven moved toward the door. “But we haven’t to cope with the Denebs just yet. Leastways, not
here.
The immediate objective is Thorstern.”

“I’m coming with you.” Heaving himself out of the pneumaseat, Charles hitched his middle, let guileless eyes rest on Mavis. “Hold the fort, Honey. If anyone asks, tell them Papa has gone fishing—but don’t say for what.”

“See that you come back,” she ordered. “In one piece.”

“In this strange phase of existence of life in death one can guarantee nothing.” He released a wheezy laugh, his belly quivering in sympathy. “But I’ll try.”

With that parting crumb of comfort he followed Raven out, leaving her to get on with her chosen task of standing guard over things that were of the Earth but not earthly.

And like Leina as she sat alone, watching, watching—listening, listening—her chief consolation was that her solitude was shared by other silent sentinels elsewhere.

The invariable eventide fog was now creeping into the city, rolling with sluggish purpose along its streets and avenues in thick yellowish swirls that became still denser as the hidden sun went down. By midnight it would be a warm, damp, all-obscuring blanket through which nothing would move with certainty except blind men, restless, sleepless nocturnals and a few whispering supersonics “echowalking,” that is to say, finding their way like bats.

In the rain forests it was different; the trees lay on considerably higher levels while the fog hugged the valleys and the plains. The search in the forests would continue, with copters whirring over the treetops and hunters scouring the glades.

Charles and Raven passed a shop window in which an outsize spectroscreen displayed ballet dancers moving delicately through a scene from
Les Sylphides.
The prima ballerina drifted across the stage with infinite grace, pale and fragile like a blown snowflake.

Yet only a few miles away, deep within the encroaching dark, were monstrous forms and monstrous vegetation marking the frontiers of the half-known and the unknown. It was a contrast of extremes that few noticed, few thought about. When a planet has been settled long enough to have a population mainly native-born, erstwhile dreams become humdrum, the alien becomes the familiar, old-time fantasies are replaced by new and radically different ones.

Stopping outside the window and studying the scene, Charles said, “See the ease and grace with which she pirouettes, the lithe slenderness of her limbs, the calm, impassive, almost ethereal beauty of her face. Note how she pauses, hesitates, flirts and darts away like a rare and wonderful butterfly. She is a good example of a rather unearthly type that has enthralled humanity for centuries: the ballet type. She fascinates because she makes me wonder.”

“About what?” Raven inquired,

“Whether her type are paranormals not recognized as such and not suspecting it themselves. It is possible to have a talent far too subtle to be named and classified.”

“Make it clearer,” Raven suggested.

“I wonder whether people like her have a subconscious form of extra-sensory perception that impels them to strain poetically toward a goal they can neither name nor describe. Such intuitive awareness gives them an intense yearning that they can express in only one way.” He pointed to the screen. “Butterfly-like. A butterfly is a day-loving moth.”

“You may have something there.”

“I’m sure I have, David.” He left the window, continued onward at a fast waddle. “As a life-form in their own right human beings have made a good accumulation of knowledge. How immensely greater would it be if they could add to it all the items they’ve got subconsciously or instinctively but cannot correlate on the conscious level.”

Raven said, “Brother Carson, who is no stupe, is with you in that. He showed me a list of known mutants and then warned that it might be far from complete— types hanging around undiscovered by themselves, much less by others. It is difficult to identify oneself as an oddity unless the oddness happens to be self-advertising.”

Nodding vigorously, Charles contributed, “Rumor has it that an entirely new type was discovered this week and by pure accident. A young fellow who lost his hand in an argument with a buzz saw is now supposed to be growing another.”

“A bio-mechanic,” defined Raven. “Can service himself with new parts. Well, it’s an innocuous faculty, which is more than can be said for some.”

“Yes, sure, but the point is that up to then he didn’t know he could do it because he’d never lost a piece of himself before. But for that accident he could have gone through life and to his grave without the vaguest notion that he possessed a super-normal power. So I often wonder how many more folk lack adequate knowledge of themselves.”

“Plenty. Look at what
we
know.”

“I am looking,” assured Charles, quietly. “It is so much that it would shake a thousand worlds if they shared it.” His fingers curled around the other’s elbow, digging hard. “In fact, it’s so much we take it for granted that it’s all. David, do you suppose that. . . that—?”

Raven stopped in mid-stride. His silver-flecked eyes were bright as he gazed into other eyes similarly illuminated.

“Finish it, Charles. Finish what you were going to say.”

“Do you think maybe
we
don’t know half as much as we believe? That what we do know is very far from being the whole story? That there are others who do know more, watching us exactly as we are watching these, sometimes laughing at us, sometimes pitying us?”

“I can’t say.” He registered a wry grin. “But if there are, we do know one thing— they don’t interfere with
us!”

“Don’t they? Can we be sure of it?”

“They don’t in any manner that we can recognize.”

“We recognize Deneb tactics,” Charles retorted. “They do plenty of shoving around that is intended for us but not felt by us. Conversely, others could push us without knowing whom they were pushing, without us knowing we were being pushed.”

“Better still, they could adopt our own methods to our own confusion,” offered Raven, manifestly skeptical but willing to take it along. “They could appear to you and me pretty much as we appear to these, visibly ordinary.” He waved a hand to encompass the local citizenry. “Just like any other Joe. Suppose I told you I’m a Deneb in fleshly disguise—do you dare to call me a liar?”