Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (77 page)

“He told me without realizing it. He named his alien obsession and I’m giving it you for what it’s worth.”

Leeming breathed heavily, excitement showing in his eyes.

“It could be, too. It really could be. Areas of local infection are identical. Brain and spinal column. You can see what that means—a fight for living space.”

“Suppose you squirt someone full of meningococci,” Harper went on, “and he becomes cured with respect to the foreign disease. What’ll he be like with respect to the cure itself?”

“That’s something we’ve yet to discover,” said Leeming, grim and determined.

“Well, I’ve no choice but to leave it with you. All I ask is for you to remember that your first test-subject is my friend.”

He cut off, racked the phone, sat twisting his fingers and staring at them. After a while he held his face in his hands and murmured, “It had to be Riley and his wife. Poor devils!”

In the late afternoon Norris beckoned him out of Moira’s hearing, said, “They got Mrs. Riley, Mrs. Reed and two men named Farley and Moore. We’ve discovered that the women are sisters. Farley and Moore were friends of the Reeds. Moore was a close business associate of the Baum brothers. You can see the link-up and how trouble has spread from one to another.”

“Did they put up a fight?”

“You bet they did. When the boys got there the house was empty and the front door still swinging. The rats had run for it but hadn’t time to escape from sight. Mrs. Riley, Farley and Moore were nabbed on the street half a mile away. They needed three men apiece to hold them.”

“And what of the others?” Harper asked.

“Mrs. Reed was picked up in a store pretending to be one of the crowd. She reacted like a wildcat. Reed himself stepped off a roof rather than be taken. McDonald was trapped in a parking lot while trying to steal a car. He was armed. He shot it out to the finish.”

“He is dead?”

“Yes. Same as Langley and for the same reason. It was impossible to take him alive.”

“How about Gould?”

Norris rocked back. “What d’you mean, how about Gould?”

“He was there at Riley’s house.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“I’m positive.”

Accepting that without argument, Norris affirmed, “There was no sign of him. But he’ll be found.” He mused a bit, went on, “We’re now tracing all contacts of the entire bunch and pulling them in as fast as we find them. The total number may come to hundreds. Anyone known to have stood within a yard of any one of them is liable to be taken for questioning. You’d better hold yourself in readiness to look them over as we line them up.”

“All right.”

“It may go on for weeks, perhaps months.”

“I’ll suffer it.” Harper eyed him speculatively. “You say that Riley’s house was deserted when your men arrived?”

“Yes.”

“Who tipped them to leave in a hurry?”

“Nobody,” said Norris. “When Riley didn’t return on time they took alarm and fled.”

“It was more positive than that,” Harper informed. “They were tipped.”

“By whom?”

“By Riley himself. He couldn’t help it. He lost consciousness and that was enough for them. They got out fast the moment one of your boys clouted Riley on the head. They
knew
he’d been caught.”

“I don’t see how,” Norris protested.

“Never mind how. I’m telling you that each one of them knows when another has been put out of action.”

“What of it, anyway?”

“At the Bio. Lab. they’re holding an afflicted dog. I’ve a feeling that sooner or later that animal may be able to summon help. It’s a guess and nothing more. How about persuading Jameson to put a guard on the place?”

“It’s already protected. You ought to know that. You’ve been there.”

“The guard is a military one. It isn’t prepared for the sort of trouble we’re having here.”

“You’re doing the identification for us at this end,” said Norris. “Who’ll do it for them down there?”

“Me.”

“What, over such a distance?”

“I’m going there. I’m a constant center of interest to the foe no matter where I may be. That dog is a focal point for them. So is each and every live victim we hold. Get them all in one place and we thereby create a cumulative attraction that may prove irresistible. Desire for revenge, rescue and continued concealment should be more than enough to draw the enemy’s lull strength to the one spot. Their best bet lies in making a concerted effort. It would be about the only chance we’d ever get of settling them with a single blow.”

“I'll put it to Jameson and ask him to consult General Conway,” said Norris. “The plan is worth considering.”

“While you’re at it you can tell Jameson that I’m on my way, no matter what is decided.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I can. Try giving me contrary orders and see where it gets you.” He grinned at Norris. “I’m a free individual and intend to remain one with or without the kind permission of Conway or any other character.”

“But Rausch and I have to stay with you,” Norris objected. “And we’re supposed to work this trap. It’s operating all right. Look at today’s catch.”

“The bait is transferring itself to a bigger and better rat-run,” Harper gave back. “Please yourself whether you come along.”

He tramped into the office, found his week-end case, checked its contents, said to Moira, “Hold the fort, rush out the products, make excuses for me and bank the profits. Papa’s taking another trip.”

Norris and Rausch piled into his car as he was about to start, and the former said, “We’ve got to hang on to your coat-tails, no matter what you do. Your plant remains under guard. But if someone cockeyed walks into it there’ll be nobody to give warning.”

“Same applies at the Bio. Lab., which is now a more enticing target.” Harper pulled out from the curb and took the center of the street. “And I cannot be in two places at once.”

He drove fast with another burdened car following close behind. His mind reached out and felt around as he went through the town. This time, he decided, a faint threnody of alien thoughts would not be ignored. He was at the wheel and he’d go after it.

But it did not come. They cleared the town and roared into the country without being drawn into hectic pursuit of a lone masquerader among the multitude. That did not mean that Gould or any fellow conspirators had fled the place; only that if still there they were lurking out of receptive range.

The car swung into its fenced and patrolled destination an hour after darkness had fallen. Norris immediately put through a call to Jameson, briefed him on latest events. Some time later Jameson called back.

“You’re getting your own way,” Norris informed Harper. “Conway has ordered special measures to protect this place.”

“Unless I’ve gravely miscalculated, we’ll need ’em.”

They did.

The attack came four days afterwards, by which time the delay had given some the secret belief that nothing would ever happen. It employed a technique characteristic of alien-controlled minds filled with two-world data and trying to combine the tactics of both. The plan represented a compromise between sneakiness and direct assault.

At midday a large, official-looking car slid up to the gates barring the main entrance. Its driver was attired as a sergeant of military police and its sole passenger was a gray-haired, autocratic man in the uniform of a four-star general. The sergeant showed the sentry an imposing pass, stamped, signed and ornamented with a large seal. The sentry scanned it slowly, making no attempt to open the gates. He smelled eucalyptus.

“Hurry up, Mister!” urged the sergeant authoritatively, while the general gazed forth with an air of stern reproof.

Though made nervous by the presence of high rank, the sentry took his time. He had been well-trained these last few days and understood that the gates were barred to God himself unless a bell in a nearby hut clanged permission to enter.

The bell did not sound. In the hut, at back of the fence, a watching agent pressed a stud. And in a building a quarter of a mile away a buzzer drew Harper’s attention to the gate. He heard the whirr, ceased conversation with Rausch, listened, pressed another stud. A shrill peep sounded from the hut and an alarm siren started wailing over the main building.

Startled, the sentry dropped the pass, leveled his gun at the sergeant. Four agents leaped from the hut, weapons in hands. A dozen more appeared in the roadway behind the car.

Once more the possessed displayed their inhuman contempt for bullets and sudden death. Without slightest change of expression the sergeant let the car charge forward. The sentry fired two seconds before the hood struck his chest. The car hit the gate squarely in the middle and exploded.

The gate, the entire front of the hut, the car, its occupants, the sentry and six agents flew to pieces. Four more agents lay mauled and dead. Six groaned by the fence, injured but alive.

Two heavily loaded cars screamed along the road and rocked through the gap. The wounded agents fired into them as they passed, without visible result.

Neither vehicle got more than twenty yards beyond the wrecked gateway despite the lunatic speed with which they had arrived. The alarm had sounded too promptly, the preparations for it were too good, the drill too well-organized.

The leading car found its route blocked by an eighty-ton tank which lumbered forward spewing fire from three loopholes, riddling the target at the rate of two thousand bullets per minute. Shedding glass, metal splinters and blood, it slewed-on to grass and overturned. Nothing stirred within it.

Its follower halted just inside the fence, disgorged eight men who spread fanwise and raced inward at an angle outside the arc of fire. Ignoring them, the tank busily wrecked their machine.

Something farther back gave a low, dull
whoompwhoomp
and spurts of heavy vapor sprang from the ground one jump ahead of the invading eight. It did not halt them or give them to pause. They pelted headlong through the curtain of mist, made another twenty yards, collapsed one by one.

A pair of them dropped clutching grenades in hands that lost grip as vapor compelled their minds to swirl into unconsciousness. Released plungers walloped detonators, there came two brief eruptions of turf, dirt and flesh.

Masked men picked up the remaining six as the tank crunched forward on noisy caterpillars and filled the torn gateway. Shots and shouts sounded far away at the other side of the area where six men had picked off two patrolling guards, climbed the fence and been trapped. It was a foolhardy tactic depending for success in sufficient diversion at the front gate.

Five minutes after the battle had ended a convoy of armored cars toured the countryside for fifty miles around, Harper being a passenger in the first one. It was two hours before he picked up the only trace.

“There!” he said, pointing to an abandoned farmhouse.

They kept him out of reach while they made the attack. It produced three corpses and two badly wounded captives.

No more were findable before dawn, when the search became complete. Harper arrived back red-eyed, tousle-haired and fed up.

“Gould was in that first car,” Norris informed.

“Dead?”

“All of them, nine in number. That tank made a job of it.” He shrugged, added, “Now we’ve the task of discovering the identities of all those involved, including those whose bodies got scattered around. After that, we must trace all their contacts and bring them in for clearance by you. I can see this lasting my lifetime.”

Leeming entered the room. He was pale and drawn from lack of sleep. He said to Harper, “I’d like you to come take a look.”

Leading the other through a series of corridors in which an armed guard stood at every corner, he reached a row of strongly barred cells, pointed into one.

“What can you tell me?” he asked in strained and anxious tones.

Harper looked. Inside, clad only in socks and pants, Riley sat aimlessly on the edge of a bed. His eyes were lackluster but his beefy face held an expression of childish amusement.

“Well?” pressed Leeming. “Is the virus conquered?”

“Yes.” He voiced it without triumph and the other heard it without joy.

“You can say positively that it is no longer active within his system?”

“Yes.”

Leeming hesitated, spoke solemnly. “I gave him what you said he feared the most. We had to try it. We just can’t wait for a vaccine. First things come first— and humanity comes before the individual. So I called in Gottlieb and Mathers of the Bacteriological Warfare Station and we tried it.”

Harper made no remark.

“It has proved a cure,” Leeming went on. “Physically there are no ill effects. He shows no symptoms of meningitis from that viewpoint. Nevertheless, he has paid a price. I know it but I want your confirmation.” He looked at Harper as if hoping for the one chance in a thousand that he would be pronounced wrong. “What is the price?”

“Insanity,” said Harper.

“I hate to hear you say it.” Leeming stood silently awhile and tasted the bitter ashes of victory, then said with faint hope, “There’s another one in the next cell. A fellow named Moore.”

Harper went there, gazed in and declared, “The same.” Then something inside him gave way and he growled, “They’re better off dead. Do you hear me? They have minds like porridge, all messed up to hell, and they’re better off dead.”

“They are dead,” informed Leeming, on the defense. “They were dead when first brought to me. I cannot restore a human spirit already lost, I cannot recall an expelled soul. Science has its limits. When it can get that far it will have ceased to be science. The best we can manage is to defend the community by destroying a source of infection. And that we have achieved.”

“I know, I know. Don’t think I’m blaming you or anyone else.” He patted Leeming’s shoulder by way of comfort. “And don’t reproach yourself, either. It’s my illogical habit to regret the dirtier facts of life even when they’re unalterable.”

“Everything that can be done will be done,” assured Leeming, perking up slightly. “We’re treating all of them in the same way because at least it’s swift and sure. After that, some of the country’s best mental specialists will take them over. That’s right out of my field but I wouldn’t say they’re beyond help. Maybe others can restore them to normality.”