Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (75 page)

“According to the Feds I’m in some sort of danger,” informed Harper. “If so, Moira shares it simply by working with me and being closest to me. I don’t want her to suffer for my sake.”

That had its calculated effect by lulling the other mind. It was much like playing a conversational version of chess, Harper thought. Move and countermove, deceitfulness and entrapment, prompt seizure of any advantage or opening likely to lead toward checkmate.

The next moment Riley emphasized the simile by making a dangerous move. “That may be so. But I am not Gould, McDonald or Langley. So why pick on me?”

There was nothing for it but to accept the challenge by making a bold advance.

Eyeing him steadily, Harper said, “I am not yawping about you personally. I am uneasy because I don’t know who gave you that ticket.”

The mental answer came at once: Gould.

“What does it matter?” Riley evaded. “How was he to know I wouldn’t use it myself or that I’d offer it to Moira?”

“Oh, let’s drop the subject,” Harper suggested, with pretended weariness. “This chase after three men has got me jumpy enough to question the motives of my own mother.”

Soothing lotion again. The opposing brain mopped it up solely because it was plausible.

“The sooner they’re picked up the better I’ll like it,” continued Harper, offering fresh bait. “Take McDonald, for instance. He was around these parts quite recently. A smart copper like you ought to be able to find him.”

Eureka! Out came the reaction as clearly as if written upon paper. Gould, McDonald, the Reeds and two others previously unknown were clustered together in Riley’s own house, waiting, waiting for Harper to come along on the strength of whatever pretext Riley could think up.

So here was the real purpose of the visit. Riley had not yet got around to the enticement but would do so before leaving. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

And in due course—it was hoped—Harper would drop in upon the Rileys while his bunch of shadows politely hung around outside. He would go in like a lamb to the slaughter and, after a while, emerge visibly no different. The shadowers would then escort him home and leave him to weird dreams of a far-off land where blind bugs serviced themselves from portions of their own dead and poison-spiked cacti tottered around on writhing roots and few agile creatures had souls to call their own.

The foreign intelligence now animating Riley proved itself sharp enough to bait the baiter. “What makes you think that I should succeed where a regiment of agents has failed?”

Harper had to react fast to that one. “Only because you’re a local boy. They’re out-of-towners. You’ve sources of information not available to them. You know the ropes, or ought to after all these years.”

It was not quite enough to halt the probe.

“Then why didn’t they rely on the police instead of pushing themselves in by the dozens?”

“Ask me another,” Harper said, shrugging. “Probably someone’s decided that the more men on the job, the better.”

“It has bought them nothing so far, has it?” asked Riley, seemingly a little sarcastic.

But it was not sarcasm. It was temptation hidden under a cloak of mild acidity. It was an invitation to make mention of the Baums, to come out with a reply indicating how they’d been recognized for what they were.

The mind of Riley was working fast, driven on by the urgency of the slime that commanded it. But seek as he might, he could not find a satisfactory explanation of the contrast between his own immunity and the speedy downfall of others of his type.

Temporarily, the only theory that fitted the circumstances was an unsatisfactory one, namely, that Harper’s menacing ability functioned haphazardly or under certain specific conditions not present at this moment. However, no theory served to explain how it was done. On the contrary, the existing situation complicated the puzzle. What could be the nature of positive detection that operated only in spasms?

In the few seconds that Riley spent mulling these problems, Harper strove to cope satisfactorily with some of his own. By dexterous use of leading comments how much could he get out of Riley without giving himself away? How best to frame questions and remarks that would draw essential information from the other’s mind? How to find out the means by which Riley himself had been taken over, how many others had become possessed, their names, their hiding-places, their plans and so forth?

“No,” agreed Harper, thwarting him. “It hasn’t gained them a cent so far.” Refusing to be stalled, Riley took it further. “Except that they’ve wiped out a couple of boys named Baum. We got a routine report from a patrolman about that. It wasn’t an auto accident, no matter what the official version says. It was the result of a fracas in which you were involved.”

Harper offered no remark.

“Maybe it’s no business of mine,” Riley went on with just the right mixture of resentment and persuasiveness, “but if I knew how and why the Baums were finished it might give me a lead to this McDonald.”

“Why?” asked Harper, looking straight at him. “Is there any connection?”

“You know there is. It’s all part of the same crazy business.”

“Who says so?”

The other’s mind had a moment of confusion born of sudden need to cast doubt on what it knew to be true.

“Well, isn’t it?”

“Maybe and maybe not,” said Harper, keeping a perfectly expressionless face. “Damn it, if you don’t know what’s going on, who does?”

That was another dexterously dug pitfall, a call to produce an evasive answer that might reveal plenty by its various implications.

Harper side-stepped the trap, feeling cold down his back as he did it.

“All I can tell you is that they were known to have become pally with McDonald. Therefore they were wanted for questioning. Immediately they were spotted they fled for dear life and one thing led to another.” He paused, fought cunning with cunning by adding as a mystified afterthought, “It beats me completely. They weren’t accused of a major crime, so why did they flee?”

Turmoil grew strong in the opposing brain. It had been asked the very question to which it desired the answer, as a matter of life or death. The assumed holder of the secret was seeking the solution himself.

Why did they flee?

Why did they flee?

Round and round whirled the problem and persistently threw out the only answer, namely, that the Baums had run because they’d become known and had realized
how
they’d become known. Therefore the mode of identification must be self-revealing. The possessed could not be fingered without sensing the touch.

Yet now that it was put to actual test there was no recognition, no dramatic exposure, no feelable contact, no touch, nothing.

What’s the answer to that?

“As a guess, divide this world’s bipeds into types A and B. The former is vulnerable because identifiable by some method yet to be discovered. Joyce Whittingham was of that type. So were the Baums. So might others be. But for unknown reasons type B is impervious to the power of Harper and any more who may share it. By sheer good fortune this body called Riley happens to be of that kind. ’’

So the alien thought-stream ruminated while Harper listened, mentally thanking God that it had retained its pseudo-human role and not switched to transspatial double-talk.

It went on,
“If this notion should be correct, then salvation lies around the corner. We must learn the critical factor that protects type B and how to distinguish one type from another. Henceforth we must take over only type B. The vulnerable ones can be dealt with afterwards. ”

We! The plural! Momentarily, in his concentration, Riley was thinking of himself as a mob!

Deep down inside himself Harper was sickened by this first-hand reminder of the ugly facts. The invader was a horde multi-millions strong. Each capture of a human body was victory for a complete army corps represented by a few drops of potent goo in which the individual warrior was—what?

A tiny sphere of hazy outline.

A fuzzy ball.

My brother’s keeper!

Determined to make the most of his opportunity while it lasted, Harper went on, “Someone once remarked that the only difference between those in prison and those outside is that the latter have never been found out. Possibly the Baum brothers had something on their consciences and wrongly supposed it had been discovered. So they ran like jackrabbits.”

“Could be,” admitted Riley, while his thoughts said,
“It doesn’t fit the facts. They had no cause for flight other than realisation of betrayal. Harper knew them for what they were but refuses to admit it. That is at least consistent of him. He always did keep a tight mouth about his power. ”
A pause, followed by,
“Yet at the moment he lacks that power. Why? The reason must be found!”

“Anyway, what’s the use of gabbing?” Harper continued, craftily spurring the other on. “Talk gets us nowhere and I have work to do.”

“You can’t give me one useful hint concerning McDonald?”

“No. Go look for him yourself. You’ll get plenty of kudos if you nail him. Besides, he may lead you to Gould, who is wanted just as badly.”

“Gould?” He stared across, thinking,
“Do they know or suspect that he is in this town?”

“And his contacts,” added Harper, panning for paydirt. “Every one of them for the past three months.”

The result was disappointing. He got fleeting, fragmentary pictures of a score of people without any means of determining who they were or where they lived, of what parts they were playing in this struggle for a world.

“When Gould and McDonald have been fastened down good and tight,” he went on, “we may then have time to seek afresh for Alderson’s killer and try for that five thousand you covet.”

He was doing fine. The reference to Alderson brought the hoped-for reaction: a fragment of memory radiated with vividness. McDonald holding Joyce Whittingham while Gould sank a needle into her arm. Joyce struggling and screaming. A police cruiser suddenly halting right behind. Alderson jumping out and making for the Thunderbug. Langley pulling a gun and dropping him before he could intervene. So Langley had done it.

Hah! That brought up something else of considerable significance. The country’s entire forces of law and order, Riley included, had been alerted to capture three men, not two. Yet Riley had shown no curiosity about Langley. He had asked about McDonald. He had accepted without question the reminder concerning Gould. Any normal individual would have brought up the subject of the third quarry—unless he knew that he was dead. Did Riley know that? If so, how had he learned it? How to find out?

Daringly, he rushed the issue. “As for Langley, nobody need worry about him any more.”

Riley said nothing vocally but did utter a mental,
“Of course not. He’s finished. ”

“Who told you?” asked Harper.

“Told me what?”

“About Langley?”

“I don’t know what you mean. Nobody has said anything to me concerning him.”

“I’ve just mentioned that Langley is out of the running,” Harper reminded. “You made no remark, showed no surprise. So I took it for granted that it was old news to you though I can’t imagine how you got hold of it.”

“You’re wrong,” contradicted Riley, hastening to cover up a minor blunder. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it. The information failed to sink in.”

He was too late. His mind had lagged seconds behind Harper’s wits and his tongue had come last in the field. Despite intervening hundreds of miles, Riley had known of Langley’s end the moment it occurred. He had sensed it as surely as one may gaze across a valley at night and see a distant light become suddenly extinguished.

It was a wholly alien faculty having nothing in common with any human sense. The possessed enjoyed a peculiar awareness of the existence of their own kind, could follow it blindly until they had gravitated together. By the same token, loss of awareness with respect to one particular focal point meant death far away over the horizon. Just the bare fact of death, without any details.

The same sense could detect a dreadful urgency radiated by another, the equivalent of a cry for help. It was strictly non-telepathic. A psi-factor. In effect, Riley could look afar, see the life-light emanating from one of his own kind, see it winking a summons for assistance, see it go dark. No more than that.

Perhaps it was the ultimate form of what Earth called the herd instinct. An alien protective device evolved on another world where survival sometimes demanded a rapid gathering of the clans and the lone individual went under.

Therefore, elsewhere they must have a natural enemy, a constant antagonist not strong enough to keep them in total subjection, much less eliminate them, but sufficiently redoubtable to restrict their spread and help maintain a distant world’s balance of competing life-forms.

What could it be? Some strong-stomached animal that craved and consumed a potent virus with all the avidity of a cat lapping cream? A creature capable of devouring a possessed body without harm to itself? Or something smaller which came like warrior ants in hordes of its own and lived by ingesting armies of the vicious?

The datum was precious enough to be worth discovering if it could be gotten. But how to get it? How could he entice it from a hostile and wary mind without giving himself away? How can one question a Venusian concerning the fauna and flora of Venus while successfully managing to uphold the pretense of regarding him as a natural born native of Earth?

Another expedition might pick up the information some day—providing it did not succumb to the same fate as the first. But if urgent problems were not solved here and now there would never be another expedition, or not one that was truly human.

Knowledge of a deadly enemy’s own especial foe was there, right there across the desk, buried within a mastered brain. If only it could be extracted, the scientists could search Earth for a local counterpart fully as capable of handling this alien menace. It was a glittering prize worth far more in the long run than capture of all this world’s afflicted. It meant ability to deal with the root cause instead of fooling around with the symptoms.