The Mind Readers (22 page)

‘Oh, it's major stuff, my boyoh!' The newcomer was eating as though starved. ‘It's all in embryo of course and looks it, rather. Both comic and embarrassing, but you'll see it's a real little living cell. I've been working with Len Drummond, you know. George Kestler has done what you might call the biology and I've been slaving away directly under Tabard. We now know everything about poor old Loopy Len except why he was born, poor chap.' He paused and Helena intervened.

‘That's the remaining brother! The one who
sent
the commands?'

‘That's him. I'm so glad you're in the picture Mrs Ferris. I didn't know how far Mayo stuck to the “no tellee wifee” rule. We had to waive it in our lot. No one would play! Well, after virtually wearing the item poor old Len calls a brain cuddled round my own for months and months, I suddenly discovered that he was one of these “colour-and-week-day” characters. You know them, don't you?'

‘People who associate Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and so on—each with a different definite shade?'

‘That's it. No work has ever been done on it as far as I know. It's just a common old “common phenomenon”. Some people do and some don't.'

‘Monday is pinky-red,' said Sam. ‘Tuesday bright pale blue, Wednesday light green, Thursday grey, Friday brown, Saturday white and Sunday yellow.'

‘Or gold,' said Drasil Vaughan-Jenner. ‘Yes, you're fairly typical of B group. Thursday is neutral—grey or beige, and Saturday is a “no”; that is to say, black or white. The A people are quite different. It's curious, we don't know why. However, Len is B Group and so am I, although we differ as to the depth and type of the various shades. That seems to be the usual modification. There's endless variety there and we wasted a lot of time on it.'

‘Wasted?' enquired Martin, who was listening intently.

Drasil grinned. ‘We missed the one vital point.'

‘Which is?'

‘That one's reaction to colour is
emotional.
It's very slight, of course, but everything in this whole business is low-powered. We're dealing in gossamer. Nothing half as vigorous as a cats-whisker this time!'

‘What do you know!' Martin spoke softly and then began to laugh. ‘It's a genuine transposition,' he said at last.

‘Feel into thought—Thought into feel,' said Sam, who was listening with the absorbed attention of one who had, it seemed, already pondered on the problem and discussed it. ‘Edward will go crazy about this. It must be reliable too, because you don't change your colours ever, do you? It's a thing you're born with and you keep it all your life. Do you?'

‘God knows! That's another great field for homework.' Drasil was talking to Martin. ‘We're all kids at this stage, you see. We just don't know. The possibilities stretch out across acres of untrodden country.'

‘What about your E.S.P. tests on this to date?'

‘That's just it. They're staggering. Something like seventy three per-cent bang on, using all seven days of the week.'

‘You use cards?'

‘Yes. Len has the colours before him to generate the juice and the Receivers just have the printed names of the days . . . if they can read. Illiterates have a duplicate set of colours but they call out the names of the days. Len is in his sound-proofed box.'

‘Can you use anybody else but Len?'

The newcomer nodded. He looked positively guilty. ‘Forty eight per cent correct with no special training. But they all have to be “naturals”. That is, people who have always made the association of days and colours. With your amplifier, however, we may ring up the Jack Pot. I can't wait to see it in action, nor can Tabard.'

‘Seven digits!' said Martin. ‘Seven separate days and colours, each capable of being transmitted.'

‘Exactly! With a computor and a code one could send out
“War and Peace”
!'

Martin whistled. ‘The justification of General Smythe-White, by God!' he said piously. ‘What about these transmitting types, Drasil? The Lens of the world? Do they have to be “sub-normal” or of very low I.Q.? That seems sort of horrible to me.'

‘Oh, if you think about it it's all pretty alarming!' The young man was grinning. ‘It won't appear so in a generation, naturally. Get it in perspective and it's not so depressing. After all, the effect of one night's viewing of a whole programme on Channel Nine on anybody's resuscitated Great Grandpa would present some interesting psychiatric data, I should think, wouldn't you? But actually, that problem you raise may not turn up. Tabard feels that subnormals and . . . er . . . kids—sorry, Sam—only make such good operatives because their forward minds are not entirely occupied. The amplifier may alter all that. The messages may come smashing through into anybody's intelligence.'

‘But it's so dangerous!' Helena's cry was silenced by the young man's curious expression as he glanced at her.

‘That's eternal too, ma'am,' he said. ‘That's another little item which can't be helped. But cheer up, with the danger comes the courage.'

Helena looked at him curiously. ‘That's what my uncle the Canon says.'

‘Is it? It's Professor Tabard's great cry. However, the absolutely fascinating thing at the moment is a little item I've been saving for last. You know I told you George Kestler has been doing the biology? Well, he's come up with some very odd figures. They are so consistent that they can't be discounted. Far and away the best results in our colour-week-day tests are obtained with subjects who have one cracking great item in common: their blood group. That's why your latest contribution has sent Tabard through the roof. He's got poor George with him now. It looks as if they're approaching the heart of the heart of the heart, so to speak! What we all want now is the amplifier, please. If that dreary old mick, Mayo—consider that unsaid Martin—will only return with one of these, all will be forgiven and most things forgotten.'

In the silence which followed, while each member of the family was absorbed by his own particular reaction to the news, the sound of a car door slamming just outside penetrated into the room. An instant later someone tried the handle of the hut door and a familiar voice reached them.

‘Albert!' Martin got it open but no one came in. The group round the table heard a brief whispered consultation and Martin went out without a word.

The thin man was alone and his face looked like bone in the uncertain light.

‘It's Paggen Mayo I'm afraid, Martin.'

‘Oh God . . . not doing anything utterly crazy? Not refusing to give the things up?'

‘No. Can you come with me? I've got to talk to his wife. He's dead.'

‘
No
.' Martin was appalled. ‘I don't believe it. How, for Heaven's sake?'

‘We don't know quite. His body was found this afternoon in a truck, in a pile up on the Pittingham-Saltbridge motorway up in the Midlands. The driver is in hospital and can't tell us anything at the moment.'

‘But how could he get there?'

‘That's it. Luke's gone up to see what he can discover. They caught us with a police car just outside London on the way down here and took him off to a railway. I don't know anything else yet except that there seems to be a particularly bright Chief Inspector at Saltbridge Central who recognised the name on a tailor's tab and had the sense to ring the Yard. So it's being kept quiet at the moment. There's no hard information about the cause of death but the same D.C.I. is fairly certain it's an Unarmed Combat job, on which he's an expert. That would make it murder.'

Martin swung round on him. ‘What about the amplifiers?'

‘Exactly,' said Mr Campion. ‘There's no trace of them.'

THE SEA,
RUSHING
in and out at speed, had left bright pools in the clay folds and in the air a coarse pleasant flavour like dried fish.

It was some time since the two had returned from their painful interview with Melisande Mayo and Mr Campion had gone to the mainland to telephone in order to avoid using the closely watched island exchange. Martin was still pacing the rough grass before the hut and when Sam was asleep, and nearly all the lights of the main block lost in the sea-wrack, Helena had come out to join him.

She had brought his coat and wore a shawl herself and for a long time they plodded along together over the turf, she turning when he did and neither saying a word.

Presently he put an arm round her shoulders and her head lay heavy against his collarbone.

‘I should think this cleared him, wouldn't you?' he asked suddenly. ‘He must have been killed
for
the things, that's certain.'

‘I think so.' She dared say no more for fear of trespassing. In the last few hours, while she had got rid of Drasil and stood over Sam until she was sure he slept, she had learned so much about herself and her husband that she was still dizzy and afraid of showing how sickening-sweet was her secret relief at the removal of the menace to their life together. Even now she did not quite understand the details of the danger which had passed so dramatically, and it took her by surprise when Martin put his finger on them out there in the darkness and tore the menace apart and threw it away.

‘There was nothing effeminate about the old boy except his devouring quality,' he observed. ‘He couldn't help that. He was just Momma and Poppa rolled into one demanding boss. He needed you to help express himself and so he had to have all of you all the time
and
your wife
and
your child all at his command. Otherwise he didn't feel safe. . . . Perhaps he wasn't. It was all to do with his creativeness, because he was creative, you know.'

Helena kept quiet. The sensation of an intolerable burden lifted was making her feel lightheaded, and the pleasure of having him back with no other allegiance to come between them was all the more acute because she had not understood the barrier when it had been there. She began to understand that he too was deeply relieved without wanting to know why.

‘I'd often heard that the personality crystallises after death but it had never registered on me before,' he went on, very happy to have her to tell it to. ‘He certainly was no traitor; that I swear. He'd never have kept it quiet from me for one thing. He'd have shown off about it, you know. Twisted it and looked at it and made it—sort of glamorous. Also, he had absolutely no intention of killing me with all that darn silly gas business last night. He simply wanted to get it into Tabard's head . . . he never got the hang of Tabard at all, the man was way above him . . . that I was some sort of brilliant nut whom no one but he could handle. That's the truth, the old so-and-so!'

He laughed softly, amazingly without resentment, condoning the outrageous act as if he were speaking of some pet animal whom he had known to be dangerous and who had savaged him because it was its nature.

‘He was taking those amplifiers somewhere to get a good look at them and at some point on the way he was murdered and robbed of them. It's a spy-killing,' he announced, arriving at the conclusion by much the same process as Amanda had done some few hours earlier. ‘As soon as he saw the things he must have decided that his data had been fed to someone outside and he couldn't discuss it with me because he'd put me out of action.'

He walked on in silence for a while and then his arm tightened about her. ‘Do you think he thought I'd done it to him?'

She realised what an effort it must have cost him even to consider it. ‘He'd be crazy if he did,' she said cautiously. ‘You were both at work on the discovery. You both wanted it to be made, whatever it entailed.'

‘Of course,' he agreed. ‘These darn laws are so
beautiful
when you see them emerging,' he added presently. ‘That's what Paggen and I had in common. We both saw it as Tabard sees it and were ravished by it in the same way. Some people only get it with mathematics. It's being able to observe a perfect mechanism emerging and that approximates to utter satisfaction. You either experience it or you don't, but I'd have forgiven Paggen any shortcoming because he could help uncover it and share the thrill.'

Helena remained silent. She had no idea what he was talking about but was sufficiently generous to see that it was important and also something that she never would know. She let him go on talking.

‘Almost the first thing I felt when I heard he was dead was regret that he'd never know what Drasil had just told us. That would have given him the kick of all time. He was waiting for the next batch of stuff on Nipponanium with his heart in his mouth. He wasn't so hopeful of Tabard's biology team but he'd got a hunch that the thing was going to break wide open any time now. His bet was on the chemists. Nipponanium is being explored in a really exhaustive way. . . .'

Helena took a deep breath.

‘Could it have been Paggen who took Sam's bag?'

‘Why should he?' He was sidetracked.

‘I was thinking of last night. While you were lying across the table and gas was hissing into the room he came rushing down with Fred Arnold in time to rescue you. How did they get in? They don't appear to have broken a window and we lock up automatically.'

‘You've got something there.' He paused and looked at her in the starlight. ‘He must have had a key. It's possible. I lent him one last time we went on leave. He felt he might have to get in for some reason—you know he was like that. Always fussing. He returned it but he could have had one cut. Oh, he was a darn silly guy. He had this mania to feel in possession. Is that what you were thinking?'

‘No. I only thought he wouldn't risk fooling about with the gas if he wasn't sure he could get you out! Maybe he wasn't as feminine as that. Poor Melisande. How has she taken it?'