Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (41 page)

“I am glad you said that.” Raven did not bother to turn around. He was splendidly indifferent to what the other intended to do. “People like us frequently are handicapped by ethical considerations. We waste valuable time trying to persuade others not to let us do things that must be done. We tend to postpone the inevitable until it can be held off no longer. It is our characteristic weakness. We are weak where less scrupulous men like you are strong.”

“Thank you,” said Thorstern.

“So it is much of a relief when prospective victims sweep all our qualms away,” added Raven. Sensing that this was the precise instant, the exact moment, he swung round, stared straight at the screen, his eyes silver-flecked and luminous, “Good-by, Emmanuel! Someday we may meet again!”

The other did not reply. He was incapable of it. His formerly strong and aggressive features were now undergoing a series of violent contortions. The eyes bulged, moved jerkily. The mouth opened and closed, emitting no sounds. A thick layer of sweat broke out on his forehead. He was like one being torn apart.

Still gently chafing the flaccid body in the chair, Raven watched all this without emotion or surprise. Thorstern’s tormented features dropped below the level of the screen. A hand appeared, grasping spasmodically. The face came back, contorted in manner harrowing to witness. All this had taken no more than twenty seconds.

Then the eerie phenomenon departed as swiftly as it had arrived. The facial muscles relaxed, the countenance tidied itself though still glistening with perspiration. The deep voice spoke again, cool, calm, collected. Thorstern’s voice with an almost indistinguishable timbre that did not belong to Thorstern. Thorstern’s mouth and larynx and vocal chords being employed as if he were a ventriloquial dummy. It appeared to be addressing a hidden microphone to the left of the screen.

“Jesmond, my visitors are about to leave. See that they are not obstructed.”

The dummy that was—or had been—Thorstern reached forward, touched a stud. The door bolts slid back. It was his last deed in this existence for the whole face changed again, the mouth fell open, the features went through several superswift alterations of amazing flexibility. Then the head vanished from the screen as the body collapsed beneath it. One could almost hear the distant thump.

Charles stirred as Raven shook him with great vigor. Opening his dull eyes, he shivered, felt himself, got slowly to his feet. He teetered a little, breathing heavily.

“We must move fast, David. I thought I had him for keeps, but the cunning devil—”

“I know. I saw the face. A
new
face. Come on!”

Jumping to the door, he jerked it open, hustled Charles through. The cabinet was silent, its screen glowing but blank. He closed the door on it, turned down the passage. There was nobody in sight.

“The cunning devil!” repeated Charles. He panted a bit, breathless with haste and full of grievance.

“Shut up. Save it till later.”

Hurriedly they passed the area covered by the still inoperative invisible light beam, out through the door and into the fog that filled the courtyard. A welter of surrounding thoughts poured into their minds, lent urgency to their feet.

“. . . so this cootch dancer comes on like an educated snake . . . Raven is dead, I tell you. He couldn’t . . . take more than a Hotsy to set fire to that dump. . . was reaching for the gas-stud when they got him somehow, I don’t know how . . . story goes they had a single-seater test-job on Jupiter a couple of years back but I guess that’s just another Terran rumor because . . . they must be multi-talented mutants no matter who says there’s no such animal. In that case ... vein of solid silver over the other side of the Sawtooths, so he’s packing and . . . can’t have got far. Sound the alarm, you dope! No use gaping at a stiff while those skewboys . . . well, next thing this Martian floater goes up to walk on the ceiling and the picture falls right out of his pocket and into his wife’s lap. She takes just one . . . hardly at the gate yet. Get that siren going ... shoot on sight... ought to have played that ace. Hey, what’s all the excitement?... care what they are or what they can do. They can die like anyone else.”

Jesmond, surly as ever, was waiting at the gate. Bad visibility prevented him from recognizing them until they were close. Then his eyes popped wide.

“You? How did you get inside?”

“Is it any business of yours?” Raven gestured at the steel barrier. “Obey orders and open up.”

“All right, keep your hair on.” Muttering under his breath, Jesmond fumbled with the complicated lock. The evening’s disturbances had made him mulish.

“Hurry—we’re pressed for time.”

“Are you now?” He paused, one hand at the lock, while he glowered at them. “Who’s doing this job, you or me?”

“Me!” said Raven promptly. He punched Jesmond on the nose, licked his knuckles. “Sorry, Pal!”

There had been plenty of vim and weight behind the blow. Jesmond went down with a resounding wallop and lay making bubbling noises through his nostrils. His eyes were closed, his mind floating somewhere among the stars.

Turning the lock, Raven flung the gate wide open, said to Charles, “You’ve done enough. Time you went home.”

“Not likely!” Charles gave him a knowing look. “The open gate is a gag, otherwise you wouldn’t have smacked down that noisy sleeper. You’re going back inside.” He commenced retracing his steps into the courtyard, doing it at an agitated waddle. “And so am I.”

Then the alarm sounded, an electric siren located high above the black battlements. Beginning with a low and ghastly moan it built up to an ear-splitting screech that ripped through the fog, echoed and re-echoed across surrounding countryside.

The two hastened through enveloping cloud that pressed cold and damp upon their faces, created pearls of moisture in their hair and trailed streakily behind them in thin, cotton-wool wisps. The typical Venusian night-time odor of crushed marigolds was now very strong. But the fog did nothing to impede their progress; they plowed straight ahead as if moving in broad daylight.

At the farther end of the courtyard and well beyond the door they had previously entered was a narrow stone archway with a lantern dangling from its center. Of lacquered brass, fanciful in design, it hung in ornate innocence and cast a thin fan of invisible light upon a row of pinhead-sized cells set in the step beneath the arch.

The siren was still screaming banshee-like as Raven sought to trace the leads governing this deceitful setup. Finally he stepped through the arch, Charles following. A moment later the siren ceased its clamor. It died out with a horrid moan. Ensuing hush was broken by angry voices and a host of equally riled thought-forms.

“Might have taken longer than I liked to bust that beam,” Raven remarked. “Its lines run all over the place and back through a large switchboard. However, I was lucky.”

“In what way?”

“Breaking the beam vibrates a visible telltale—and nobody was watching it at the moment. There seems to be a major panic inside. Everyone shouting orders at everyone else.”

Standing close to the wall, he peered around the corner and through the arch toward the gate. A scuffling of many feet could be heard in the gloom. Several forms rushed from the courtyard door toward the main exit. There sounded a jabber of voices, each trying to outshout the others. It was easier to listen to their minds.

“Too late. Gate’s open. Here he is, flat out.”

“Well, you three were in the room. What were you doing when he got conked? Playing jimbo, eh? Hear that?—any skewboys can bust in or out while these lazy bums play jimbo!'

“Oh, so you came on the run when the alarm sounded? Bah, you were an hour behind the times!”

“Quit arguing. We aren’t here to hold an inquest. They can’t be more than a few hundred yards away. Let’s go after them.”

“How’re we going to do that? Feel our way like blind men? Do you think we’ve all got radar vision?”

“Shut up! It’s the same for them, isn’t it?”

“Not on your life. I tell you they’re skewboys and multi-talented ones at that! Bet they’re sprinting through the haze as if they don’t know it exists.”

Charles whispered, “If I were like them I’d hate the guts of people like us.”

“They do. And I don’t blame them—not one little bit.” Raven gestured for silence. “Listen!”

“Aw, have it your own way but I’m going after them. They can’t escape without making noises. I’m going to shoot at noises and ask questions afterward. Coming along, Sweeny?”

“Yes, sure, I’ll come too.”

Several pairs of feet crunched gravel beyond the gate and advanced cautiously into outer darkness.

“Suppose they’re floaters—how will they make noises then?”

“They’ll make them. A floater can’t hang in mid-air for ever. What I call a
really
talented fellow is one who can digest a lump of lead.”

“Button it, Sweeny. How the devil can we hear them if your dental plates keep up a constant clatter?”

They faded as their minds turned solely to the task of listening for fugitive feet. Those remaining by the gate were still swapping recriminations with the jimbo enthusiasts while trying to revive the stricken Jesmond. Another mess of neural waves was radiating from inside the castle.

“Nothing to show what killed him. Seems like his heart just stopped of its own accord. I tell you it was sheer coincidence. No hypno can function through a scanner, much less cause his subject to die.”

“No? Then why did he draw the bolts, order the gate open and make the way clear for those two? He was hypnoed good and proper, I tell you, and through a scanner at that! Those two guys have got something nobody human ought to have.”

“You did well there,” Charles murmured with approval. “When you scowled into the screen at precisely the right moment it put them clean off the track. They’re laying all the blame on you, thinking that somehow you did it with your little peepers.”

“I’d hate them to get on the right track.”

“Yes, so would I.” The plump face puckered as Charles went on. “If only there were some satisfactory way of telling them a few startling truths without thereby giving the facts to Deneb for free.”

“There isn’t. There is no way, no way at all.”

“I know—but more’s the pity.” He went quiet, again listened to the other minds. “You called Plain City yet?”

“Yes, they’ve a bunch coming along. Couple of telepaths to listen for them mentally, if that’ll do any good. Also half a dozen hypnos, a Hotsy, and a guy with a flock of tree-cats. An assorted bunch of circus roustabouts who can walk tightropes and all that stuff.”

“The boss will have fourteen fits when he gets back and hears about all this. Reckon a bug-talker with a hive of hornets might do more—”

“There you are!” Raven nudged his companion. “What we wanted to know. Thorstern’s not here but is expected fairly soon. That fellow in the room looked nothing like Thorstern by the time you were using him. His face had relapsed into normal shape. He was lantern-jawed, gaunt and so flexible that he could wave his nose like a hand. A malleable, eh?”

“I realized it the moment I made contact with him.” Charles became disgruntled again. “He was so good that I hadn’t suspected it up to that moment. It came like a shock—but it was nothing to the shock I gave him!”

“He’ll have got over it now. Death is quite a considerable relief to the feelings.” He gave a quiet laugh. “Isn’t it?”

Ignoring the question as one to which the answer was obvious, Charles continued, “The room was lined with a grounded silver screen to keep his mind tight against probes from outside. His name was Greatorex. He was one of the only three mutants permitted in the place.”

“For special reasons, of course.”

“Yes. They have been trained to impersonate Thorstern to such perfection that it comes second nature. That’s why he talked about being invulnerable even in the room. He was speaking in one breath about two people; the big boss himself
was 
invulnerable simply because he wasn’t there.” He mused with a touch of morbidity, finished. “Those three take turns doing duty for Hizonner as and when required.”

“Where are the surviving pair? Did his mind tell you?”

“Somewhere in the city, taking it easy until they are wanted.”

“Humph! You can see what it means: if Thorstern is due back and doesn’t know what has taken place, it’s likely that he’ll come in person. But if somebody has made contact and given him all the lurid details, he may play safe by handing us another malleable, another expert mockup of himself. He’ll use one of them to bait a trap knowing we can’t refuse to snap at the bait.”

“Even so, they won’t catch us.”

“Neither will we catch him—that’s what gripes me.” He frowned to himself, suddenly shifted his attention elsewhere. “Listen to this fellow—he’s getting ideas!” It was coming through the wall from somewhere within the black castle. “All right, the gate was open and one of those dopey guards laid out. Does that mean they’ve taken it on the run? Or does it mean that’s the way they want it to look? Maybe they haven’t gone at all. Maybe they’re still hanging around. If I were a fox I’d wear a hard hat and sit on a horse. I’d live a lot longer. What if they can pick up my thoughts—will it do them any good? They can’t stop me thinking. I say we ought to search this dump and the sooner the better.”

A thinner, more impatient mind answered, “You’re crammed to the ears with ifs, buts and supposings. If I’ve nothing better to do, I can think up plenty of them myself. For instance, suppose they happen to be super-malleables, what then? You’ve not only got to find
where
they are but also
who
they are. Heck, one of them might have bloodied his own beak, laid flat on the floor and had a hard time keeping his face fixed while kidding us that he is Jesmond.” A brief pause, then, “Come to that, how do
you
know that I am
me?"

“You won’t last long if you’re not. They’re sending some telepaths from the city and they’ll soon find out exactly who you are. I say we should rake this place with a fine-tooth comb. Bet you the boss will tear off a few heads if we don’t.”