The Mind Readers (20 page)

‘That is utter poppycock!' The engineer in Amanda was thoroughly irritated. ‘It's not that sort of device and there is no reason to suppose that it will develop in that way at all. That's roughly the old “electrode implanted in a subject brain” idea—a filthy and completely anti-social concept. This thing of ours is merely an amplifier which increases the strength of certain signals whose existence have hitherto been in doubt. To give it any greater or lesser significance is to make a nonsense of it. This is the beginning. Now we have to locate and simulate the transmitter so that we can control it. No one can know where we go from there.'

‘Except Ludor,' persisted Campion. ‘Don't forget he was in it from the start. He knows exactly where he intends it to go.'

‘But the man can't sit on this, whatever the threat to his business interests! This is a secret which the Earth is giving up.
This is another shot in the locker, Albert
! It'll come bursting out all over the place once it's started. Ludor may possibly delay development for a year or so but . . .'

The words died on her lips as she caught his expression.

‘My impression is that he only needs a year or so,' he said softly. ‘Think about the man for a minute. He's the first of the “power boys” I've ever really seen in the round. One is so apt to see these lads as potential Napoleons or Stalins, straddling vast territories and controlling vast quantities of people. But spend an hour or two with Lord Ludor and you can see that quantity is incidental. He's interested in acquiring complete power over the
individual
—over the rival, the partner, the employee, the secretary, the second-in-command, the wife, the mistress, the friend, the headwaiter, the man in the wig or the coronet or just the innocent ass walking by in the street. He's a great big brutal demigod of whom everybody he comes into contact with very soon becomes openly afraid. He doesn't want to command armies. He wants to command
YOU.
At the moment he's sitting pretty; virtually omnipotent in his own particular empire. Now he's seen a chance, if only for a year or so, of being very nearly omniscient as well. I don't think he can resist it. Upon my soul! After spending a couple of hours' petrified study, trying to understand him, I believe it's as elementary as that!'

Amanda did not speak at once but eventually she said thoughtfully: ‘They say that what his boys know about “bugging” offices is nobody's business. Have you heard of that very odd little concern called “Advance Wires Ltd.”? That is said to be his. I believe they've got a small experimental outfit tucked away on Godley's Island. But I think you're overdrawing him. You make him sound like an ogre.'

Mr Campion laughed abruptly. ‘He's more like an old male gorilla sitting on the top of his own dark tree. He can look out all round him and he can boss everyone under him, but he can't see into every mind in that black labyrinth—not yet. He means to. He's bitten by the idea. Now I must go to that island and get there if I can before he does. Sam and Martin have American citizenship, which is a considerable protection in the circumstances I should say, but even so . . .'

‘Edward?'

‘I know.' He had taken her hand and stood looking down at it. Presently his fingers closed tightly over her soft forearm. ‘Ludor's theory is that Mayo will return to the Island after the test and will send Edward back here with some plausible excuse, trying to keep the whole thing dark until Daumier's interest crystallises in a definite offer. His lordship could be right, so you wait here and the instant Edward appears . . .'

‘I'll ring Security.'

‘No, my Sweet. I hate to say it but not on your life! Once you get your hands on Edward,
hide him.
Ludor is looking for him and he has highly skilled help and too much influence. He might even find him. My paternal instinct has never been over-developed but I don't feel that chap is any fair match for those of tender years.'

‘Really?' She was inclined to be derisive. ‘Even an ogre could hardly bite the child with the Director of British Security looking on.'

‘Possibly not,' conceded Mr Campion, whose pale face was still obstinate. ‘But my serious impression is that the very sight of him may stop growth. And last time I saw the revered Director he was as frightened of the brute as I am.'

Meanwhile, on the other side of the City, a hot and exhausted Edward ceased his steady trotting round the piece of waste land which had seemed so suitable for his purpose, and settled himself to rest against a plane tree. He chose the side of the trunk least visible from the footway and his dark green raincoat faded into the shadows as if it had been designed as camouflage.

He was on a hilly triangle of public land, the last that was left of the once open fields which had given the ancient Borough of Manifold Wick E. its name. The place was remarkably deserted just now, considering it was hemmed in on all sides by new blocks of flats and old mansions freshly converted into dwellings. It was the hour of the evening meal and the children and old people who enjoyed the air space in the normal way were indoors eating. It was cold under the tree and inclined to be misty. The dead leaves were damp and odorous in the sparse grass. The tall streetlamps, glowing yellow, had been lit some time and their deep orange glow took the colour out of the Pontisbright hair as Edward knew they would. He ventured to take off his beret which was abominably tight.

He was in excellent condition but he had been running for a long time and his heart was thumping. He leaned back and closed his eyes and composed himself, trying to forget his anxiety as well as his exasperation. Presently panic seized him and he put his hand up inside his muffler and felt for the patch of bandage beside his thin neck and the small, hard cylinder beneath it.

‘Running in' had always taken time, he knew, even in the beginning. He comforted himself with the reflection and thrust the sneaking fear firmly out of his mind that something drastic had gone wrong with this new example. They were going to be furious anyhow, he feared. Front-of-the-house chaps always got furious if something went wrong. He tried not to regret the lost two receivers which had been going so well, but it was difficult; they had been just ripe, just going like dreams. With Sam trained to the
nth
as well. . . . That fourth one had been jolly miraculous. Now, probably, some hamfisted ass was dissecting it. It made one feel sick. His pressure increased on the cylinder and he felt it give, as if he had pressed too hard. He was so frightened by the possibility that he froze like a rabbit and it was then, suddenly, in the moment of blankness, that he got the first burst of signals. There was no sense in them, of course, but they were there, exciting as always. He was still young enough to have no fear at all. No single starling of a feeding flock, receiving an alarm signal from a sentinel, could have been less suspicious of the mechanism by which the warning had been sent. The idea of unspoken communication between members of his own species was no bother to Edward. Many of the other facts of life, as the biology class put it so primly, still appeared to him to be much more outlandish than this simple mind-to-mind or heart-to-heart communion. As Henri had said to him, years before when they had first discussed the newly imparted details of human digestion, ‘if you can believe
that
you can believe anything!', and he had agreed wholeheartedly.

Now, curled up under the tree while the yellow lights shone warm and the shadows hung deep, he settled himself to get in the proper mood for good reception. So far, there had been no identifiable personal signal in the general storm. All the usual mysterious ‘beefing' was there, incomprehensible adult fears and meaningless moaning about uninteresting emotions, but these he could disregard out of hand. The items he could best distinguish were the yelps about homely things. These were expressions of irritation, mostly. People thinking ‘Damn this or that machine', or ‘Blast! I've missed it!' or ‘Oh! He
knows
!' or ‘Look out!'. Sometimes the whole pulsing world seemed to be full of that one intensely human but impersonal command: ‘Look out! Look out! Look OUT!' as if it were the universal message. From the point of view of one trying to be his own selector it was very exhausting. The boy eased the bandage off his pulse for a breather. That was the one bad thing about the iggy-tube. It did stop one thinking clearly. He had wondered two or three times lately if they were letting Sam do a bit too much. All the same, it had been useful this morning to know about ‘gen-fatigue'. He had had to warn Sam about not letting himself be questioned. ‘Go wet!' he had commanded. ‘You know how one does when one's iggied up?' It could all be bad for Sam, he supposed, but then he'd grow out of it only too soon. He put the worry aside for the time being and got out his book and pen to make a few notes for his report.

After a while he got up and brushed himself as well as he could and resumed the beret, trying to arrange it so that the tight-head-band did not cut into the seam across his forehead made by its last application. It had taken him some time to find the address on his first visit, but he thought he knew his way back to the house again from here and he set off walking very fast. He dived down a passage between the older houses, passed through a small area of seedy shops, found his way to a main thoroughfare—which he crossed with some difficulty since the evening traffic was still heavy—and came at last to a network of neat suburban streets, each lined with a continuous double row of newly prosperous little houses, all enjoying a second youth of brave new paint and nylon curtaining. Edward found Nemesia Road without difficulty and trotted along it looking for number forty-three. There were lights at most of the windows, and here and there a touch of gaiety, such as a bit of wrought iron or a pair of carriage lamps lit up beside a violently coloured front door.

At exactly a quarter past the hour, he pushed open the iron gate in the golden hedge which smelled of cats. There was a light in the front window, he saw with relief, but no car against the kerb, which was ominous. Hoping for the best, he hurried down the path and rang the bell.

A girl he had seen before appeared at once, pink and bothered, and stood looking down at him with good natured if somewhat off-hand compassion.

‘Oh dear!' she said. ‘It's you. I'm going to make you livid, I'm afraid. I'm so sorry.'

‘Isn't he coming?'

‘He can't yet. You see he telephoned. . . .' She was not very upset because earlier he had gone out of his way to reassure her, even hinting mendaciously that he was based fairly near.

‘Did you tell him I was here?' he enquired.

‘No, I didn't. I'm so sorry; I am really.'

She was not thinking of him at all. She was worrying about her clothes.
‘New shoes.'
Edward got the flash almost as clearly as Sam would have done.
‘Hell! New shoes!'

‘I'll come back,' he said.

‘Can you?' He suspected that she was thinking about transport now,
her
transport. It was very difficult to get her, she was so faint. Yet she wasn't unkind. She was friendly to anyone.

‘Of course I can,' he said. ‘When will you be back? Eleven? Twelve?'

‘Oh, eleven. But that's terribly late.' She was late now. Edward couldn't tell if he had heard the clock strike, or if she had suddenly thought it was half-past six and he had received it.

‘Don't worry about me,' he said. ‘And don't bother him. I'll see him when he comes in. Goodbye. I'm in a hurry, too.' He ran away from her and she closed the door after a moment of indecision. Edward knew exactly what she was thinking.

Presently he returned to the long street and started trudging back to the main road where he had noticed the delicatessen and the cinema.

It was going to be a very close thing. He was short of money and he needed some good greasy filling chips and a phone call, not to Amanda this time. He wondered if he dared reverse the charges and how you did it from a call box. It was quite a problem; the cinema was a must.

WHEN AT LAST
Martin and Sam walked slowly down the unmade track along the sea-wall to the converted army hut they both felt the afternoon had been too long.

They had lunched on sandwiches in the car coming down and, when the police escort had left them soon afterwards at the military post on the Strada, Martin had dropped off at the main Experimental Block to make a call on Professor Tabard. Melisande had then driven on to her own house and Sam and Helena had continued to the hut on foot.

They had found it in considerable disorder, for nothing had been done to it since Martin had been rescued from the escaping gas by Fred Arnold and Paggen Mayo on the night before. They did their best but there remained the question of food, and as soon as Martin had returned Helena had been forced to send him off again with Sam on a foraging expedition. On her instructions they had been to the canteen and acquired some cold ham and a loaf. Even this had not been as easy as it might have been because the indefatigable Fred Arnold, who could usually find a meal for a friend in an emergency, was not there. He was expected, though. Maureen, the fat assistant, had said so, and she had done what she could for them. She also gave them some lukewarm coffee, but the canteen had been cold and deserted and also a little sticky after the Rectory, whose shabbiness was of a different order, and they had been glad to come away. They chose the sea-wall path home because the tide was in and there was a certain wild freshness about the estuary, with the sky tumbling above it in the failing light like a line full of a giant's khaki washing.

They passed behind Paggen Mayo's prefabricated cedarwood residence and hurried a little because they did not want to see Melisande again. She had been subdued enough on the way down but there had been real fear behind her eyes and she made a difficult companion. Her daughters would be with her now: solid solemn girls in their teens, who were probably better able to manage her than anybody.