The Mind Readers (5 page)

Martin took the toy from the spike and handed it to Helena. ‘This is perfectly insane,' he said. ‘We've been looking for this all over, haven't we, Helena?'

She nodded and turned the tousled bundle about tenderly. It had never been an elegant fowl but she had made it for Sam when he was little and first enchanted by the classic tale. Its success with him had been enormous and through the years it had become one of those treasures which remain secretly important long after all other baby toys are outgrown.

‘I'm so glad it's come back,' she said.

‘Well, there it was, sprouting out of the pantry ventilator. I came round that side because I walked along the sea wall. You haven't been by there this morning, Martin?'

‘I haven't been round there for days. Was there anything else around? A very battered old brown bag, for instance?' He was about to step out to see for himself when Mayo barred his way with the umbrella.

‘Later, young sir, if you don't mind,' he said. ‘I have grave matters to impart, especially to you Ma'am . . . you look very beautiful this morning.'

Martin was frowning. ‘You see what it means, though,' he said, pointing to the bird. ‘Someone must have gotten a key of this place.'

‘Oh come.' Mayo had very bright blue eyes. ‘That's no diagnosis, Doctor. What is the margin of human error?' It was one of his typical asininities. A piece of jargon in unconvincing imitation of people who, because of the odd nature of their joint enterprise, happened to be working with him. He was like a bad mimic who yet insists on attempting impressions of people to their faces. Helena looked embarrassed and Martin laughed with indulgent exasperation.

‘What can we do for you, Paggen?'

Mayo pulled a chair towards him and sat down. ‘May I?' he said to Helena. ‘My dear lady. Circumstances have arisen which make it necessary for me to take you into my confidence. Do I make myself clear?'

‘Not particularly,' Martin was leaning forward. ‘As a matter of fact I did tell Helena that you were thinking of lifting the ban on wives knowing anything at all about the work here. That's it, isn't it? She has to go to London this morning by the way.'

‘Too bad; you'll have to postpone it.' Mayo glanced at Helena and spoke with complete finality. He had dropped his manner and reverted to type. He hitched one arm over the back of his chair and stretched his legs, ignoring her rising colour. ‘I've just had a long briefing from Lord Ludor's office. The VIP luncheon today is to be more important than we'd thought. An American Admiral is flying over, so is the man Martin knows of from Reykjavick. General Smythe-White will be there and so will someone from the Ministry. We shall need you Helena, Martin and I, and that's why I'm going to give you my lecture right away.'

‘I'm so sorry, Paggen we . . .'

‘Be quiet, dear.' He was much more of a force now that he had given up presenting himself. ‘I shan't tell you any more than I think is good for you but if you're going to be any use at all you must understand enough to know what not to talk about. I'm only trusting you because I've got to. The first thing to remember is this: although every important country in the world is having a stab at what we're trying to do the whole subject is still considered pretty absurd by all but the initiated.
That is how we want it
.'

Helena looked at her watch openly and Martin shook his head at her but Mayo went on as if he had not noticed.

‘Extra Sensory Perception, Thought-reading, Telepathy, they are all the same thing to the uninformed: mumbo jumbo. Splendid! Keep it that way as long as you can. Do you follow me?' She nodded politely, her ears strained for the sound of a car on the track outside.

‘Well now,' he said. ‘As you know, modern communications in almost every form are all in our orbit here at Godley's and there aren't many gaps, but a little while ago it became necessary to explore every other conceivable means of one man getting in touch with another . . . I shan't be more specific than that and don't let it worry you; just take it from me that in America and the Soviet Union, in West Germany, Holland, Sweden, France and here in Britain some very intelligent people started thinking around merely because no one could afford not to, and no possibility, however wild and unlikely, was neglected.' He had a slightly nasal intonation and a very penetrating voice but he knew what he was talking about and it was difficult not to be impressed. ‘From now on,' he said, pointing the umbrella at her, ‘I'm only interested in scientific actuality and so are our clients. Get that straight. If your lady mother in Suffolk started to worry in the night that you were in distress and suffocating and got on the telephone and woke you from a nightmare in which you were being strangled and you both came and told me about it I might be entertained but I shouldn't be very interested. My subject is electronics. I'm an engineer. Before I'm convinced a message has passed I want something which
someone else,
someone other than the two people originally concerned, can see, hear or taste. I want a light or a bell or I might conceivably accept a stink. I don't know. Do you understand me?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘But . . .'

‘If you're going to be a good girl and not a blasted nuisance to me and your brilliant young husband, you'll have to listen and understand this,' he said. ‘The people who started us off on our particular line of enquiry were the Navy. That has surprised you, hasn't it? I thought so. You imagined that we were mainly commercial. No. It was the Navy who discovered the Drummond brothers and that discovery set the ball rolling.' His explosive laugh echoed round the boarded walls. ‘The Army's only real contribution is General Smythe-White but he's an asset in his own right. He's that rare type which knows exactly what it wants even if it happens to be the Earth. The picture which he has in his mind's eye is of some splendid young guardsman in uniform sitting in some place inaccessible to radio and utterly unconnected with the rest of the world by any known means of communication. The only equipment he is to possess are two bulbs (sticking out of his ears, I imagine) green on the left, red on the right, and a mirror. Meanwhile, sitting at attention in an Army lecture room miles away is his opposite number, working a buzzer or a flasher, and connected by telephone to Command. One flash from number two at home intensifies the red bulb in the ear of number one: two flashes and the green one glows. No flash and there's no change. Three signals which an ordinary digital computor can translate into any message Smythe-White can imagine wanting to send. That's all he's asking for and it was a pipe dream until along came the Navy with the Drummond brothers.'

Helena was looking at him, captured at last, and he risked a glance at Martin.

‘I know you can give her much more about the Drummonds than I can but I'd rather do it my way. I hope you don't object. I'm taking the responsibility and I'm only telling as much as I think I need to. The Drummond brothers were non-identical twins, Helena. They came from an industrial slum in the North where they were both considered gormless. That is “slow” and “not very bright”. Len was the stronger character and the better specimen and he wasn't a fool but Willie was definitely “sub”, or I thought so. Martin here and Tabard had a name for him. Anyway, Willie only got into the service because Len saw that he did. The extraordinary link between these two men was first noticed on board ship. A Medical Officer who observed it had the sense to report it and fortunately the two were passed on up the line until they finished where they ought to have been from their babyhood, in the hands of our Professor Tabard who was then in Cambridge.' He paused and Martin ventured to intervene.

‘They broke entirely new ground, Helena. No one had recorded anything quite like them before.'

‘They provided the missing ingredient,' Mayo agreed. ‘In them, Nature had taken the one vital step forward and had provided us with the concrete physical phenomenon which made their communication capable of test. Willie had two birth-marks. It sounds damn silly but there they were. They were pale pink patches, one inside his left wrist and one beside his left eye. In the normal way there was nothing unusual about them and they weren't very noticeable, but when Len Drummond sent his brother a message of warning—when he released an unfriendly impulse towards him—the birth marks changed colour and became deep livid bruises. Anyone could see them and they could be recorded. So you see it did not matter what Willie
thought,
or received by way of thought transference, because we had something more definite to go on. Distance did not appear to have much effect on the phenomenon and nor did one or two other more important location factors. As long as Len was in good health and was permitted to think about his brother (to see his photograph or hear his recorded voice—that sort of thing) then the thought was transferred. One could prove it and see it.' He shook his head. ‘The positive signal was not so satisfactory. When Len sent an approving or affirmative impulse towards Willie—he used to send these messages
on command
you understand—it was quite fantastic: Willie used to giggle in an idiot way and his eyes watered. This could be made to happen whatever he was thinking or doing at the time. It was perfectly distinctive and we never found anything else to make him behave in that particular fashion but Smythe-White didn't like it. I think he expects us to improve on it. But it was good enough for us. The Drummonds were the beginning of the whole thing. They responded to every test made and Professor Tabard was cock-a-hoop because his theory, which he'd had for a very long time, looked like being proved. Naturally he wanted to get down to a full investigation of the two men, which would have taken quite a few years. However, fortunately for us, there were developments elsewhere and time was seen to be pretty damn short. So the Ministry became interested and took over. They came to Godley's and offered them Tabard, myself and Martin, plus a research grant. What they hope to get for their money is a fund of two-way, man-controlled, one-hundred-per-cent-efficient pairs of Drummonds, live or mechanical, whenever and wherever they may need them. It won't work out quite like that of course. But, because of those brothers and the work we did on them, it's by no means the ridiculous assignment it may sound to the ignorant.'

Helena's intelligent eyes met his own. ‘I thought it was someone called Drummond who broke into the huts here late last spring and went mad and committed suicide,' she said slowly.

‘That was Willie.' Mayo was scowling. ‘It wasn't suicide. The coroner was only trying to get a little notoriety. If petty officials get their noses into an outfit like this they always look for drama. The drowning was a complete accident. Professor Tabard was trying to interrupt the link between the brothers. He thought Len was the active factor and he wanted to see if he could teach him to establish the same contact with a third person. He had some success using hypnotism but meanwhile no one realised what was happening to Willie until he went berserk. He broke into nearly every building on the island looking for his brother and finished up in the mud just as the tide came in. That frightened everybody including you, I'm afraid. I'm sorry for that but it left us all in a rather difficult position, as you can guess.'

‘You couldn't continue the work without him?'

‘Good God, of course we could!' He was irritated with her for making him even consider such a disaster. ‘If there had been something phoney about the Drummonds, we couldn't. If their communication had been some sort of trick or a fantastic series of coincidences then we'd have been umpered, but Tabard had been working on the men for over three years and he'd satisfied first himself and then all the rest of us that there really was a genuine impulse carried by some sort of wave. Identification of each of these proceeds just as fast as we can.'

He leaned back in the chair.

‘Lecture ends. Now I tell you what you can do. You can see we've had progress held up for some months and it's only now that we're able to get a glimmer of a way to manufacture something faintly comparable. But meanwhile we've lost our party piece which kept the clients happy. The General particularly misses the performance. It used to give him a tremendous thrill and he thought out several little trick tests himself, some of them excellent. But now he's getting restless. He wants to be sure that we're coming up with something just as good and at the moment we just haven't got it. I have something up my sleeve which will be useful if it comes off but I will not ruin the idea by attempting to talk about it too soon. So you, Helena, will attend this blessed luncheon today and you'll sit by old Smythe-White and take his mind off any other form of entertainment. I'm certain that's how he sees it. We don't want him prodding Lord Ludor into demanding to ‘see something'. It isn't ready. They must go on hoping for a while vet and then we'll show them.'

‘You sound as if there was a flap on,' Martin was eyeing him curiously. ‘What is it?'

‘I don't know.' Mayo gave him a deliberately blank stare. ‘The message I got was that his Lordship would see me in the library or snug or whatever that plush room is called, just as soon as it pleased him to get here. I translated that as a request for some sort of display which we cannot give so I put my intention to take your wife into the hallowed circle a few days forward. I'm sorry if your week-end is curtailed, Helena, but there are other considerations.'

Helena got up. She avoided looking at Martin but met the visitor squarely.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said. ‘But you see it's all arranged. I'm meeting the child. I've only just got time to get to the station. The car must be waiting.'

Paggen let her get to the door before he spoke over his shoulder. ‘All transport was commandeered an hour ago. You won't get to any station this morning, dear. This is a research establishment, not a creche.'