Authors: Anne McCaffrey
“What’s available?” Sally asked, simulating bored indifference. Daffyd was surprised that she felt the need to dissemble.
“You name it,” replied the concessionaire, impatient. His tables were filling up.
Sally “told” Daffyd that this, too, was an innovation.
“Try something simple, schatzie,” Daffyd said, managing the verbal slurs of their assumed roles. “The Medboard warned you and I’m not copting you to the drain-brain again this month.”
Sally affected petulance, then with dutiful resignation, asked for a mild caffeine. Daffyd, in character, asked for an esoteric blend.
“Nor am I copting you!”
“Make it two milds and bring the pot.”
As the conman left Daffyd leaned towards Sally. “Is this area disaffected?”
She wrinkled her nose. “We get a lot of hopefuls from this Sector.”
Sound had come on, more frequency drone than actual note. The dim Lights on the girders were beginning to fade completely, and ground spots lit up, adding their eerie moiety to the ambience. Sally looked toward the
half-circle of stage which had remained semi-lit. The aura of expectation, of voracious emotional appetite increased perceptibly. Sally shivered and folded her arms across her breasts but Daffyd sensed that the created atmosphere irritated more than distressed her.
She shifted in her chair nervously when the waiter appeared with cups and the pot. He served them disdain-fully—he didn’t make as much commission from the milder brews—and hurried off, grimacing thanks for the carefully generous gratuity.
The auditorium was almost full now and the conversational murmur impinged on Daffyd’s senses as the snarl of the unfed. Yes, the climate of the city was very uncertain indeed. He could feel the tension building rapidly now, with so many feeding it. He noticed the muscle boys spreading through the tables and couches, and he worried harder. The psychology of a crowd was theoretically understood but there was always that gap between theory and reality—that dangerous gap which could be bridged by the most insignificant event—when crowd exploded into Riot Daffyd and Sally were far too familiar with the “tone” of Riot to be very comfortable in a pregnant situation.
In fact, Daffyd was leaning across the table to warn Sally that they might have to leave when the lighting of the stage area altered and a girl stepped into the center. She wore a white caftan-type unadorned robe and carried an old-fashioned twelve-string guitar. It had no umbilical amplifier which surprised Daffyd as much as the girl’s regal poise and simple appearance.
A camouflaged hand deposited a three-legged stool and the girl took her place on it without a backward glance.
Daffyd frowned at the darkness above the stage, wondering where the sound amplification was hidden. She couldn’t possibly hope to reach and hold this crowd without electronic boosting of some kind.
Then Daffyd saw the relieved and pleased smile on Sally’s face.
The girl settled herself, tossed back her mane of tawny hair and, without taking any notice of the audience, began to play softly. There was no need for mechanical amplification of that delicate sound. For the first note fell into a voracious silence, the most effective conductor.
No—and Daffyd sat up straight—every nerve in his body aware of a subtle, incredible pulse that picked up the gentle melody and expanded it—telepathically!
And this, too, was what Sally had hoped he’d feel, what she’d brought him here to confirm. He saw the happy triumph in her eyes. The girl’s voice, a warm lyric soprano, intensified the pulse, “sounded” off the echo as she fed the multitude with a tender ethnic admonition to love one another. And … everyone did.
Daffyd listened and “listened,” stunned physically and emotionally by the unusual experience: unusual even for a man whose life had been dedicated to the concept of unusual mental powers. On an intellectual plane, he was incredulous. He couldn’t deduce how she was effecting this total rapport, this augmented pulse. It was not mechanical, of that he was certain. Why this sensation of “echo”?
The girl would have to be a broadcasting empath: an intelligent empath, unlike poor Harold Orley who hadn’t any intellect at all. This young woman was consciously choosing and directing the emotion she broadcast … Wait! That was it … she was consciously directing the emotions … at whom? Not the individual minds of the listeners: they were responding but they could not account for the “generation” of emotion that enveloped everyone. There had to be sensitive minds to generate emotion like that and these people were parapsychically dead. Yet she was manipulating them in some way, using some method that was non-electrical and non-sonic.
The girl continued with a more complicated tune from some early nineteenth-century religious minority which had settled in the eastern United States. And the “message” of the song was a soothing statement of acceptance.
She was deliberately taking the audience out of the technocratic trap, transferring than to less complex days, lulling them into a mood of even greater receptivity. Nor was Daffyd immune to the charged atmosphere … except for that part of his brain which could not perceive how she was effecting this deft, mass control.
The singer finished that song and plucked the strings idly, chording into a different key. The third song, while no more intense than the first two, was a rollicking happy ballad, a spirit-lifter, a work doer.
She was preparing her audience, Daffyd realized, deftly and carefully. He began to relax, or rather, the intellect which had been alerted, responded to the beguiling charm of her performance.
Daffyd was suddenly frightened. A deep pang, covered in a flash, overladen with worry that was lyric-inspired. Only it wasn’t. Sally had felt the pang, too, glancing nervously around her. The rest of the audience didn’t seem to catch alarm: they were in the young singer’s complete thrall, caught up in the illusion of unpressured times and ways.
The fear was the singer’s and it was not part of her song, Daffyd concluded, because he could detect no other influence, no newcomer in the hall, no change of lighting or aura. Sally was concentrating on the girl, too.
Why would she be frightened? She had the audience in the palm of her hand. She could turn them in any direction she chose to: she could …
Her song ended and, in a fluid movement she rose, propped her guitar against the stool and casually disappeared into the shadowy rear of the stage.
Sally turned anxious eyes to Daffyd, and they shared the same knowledge.
She’s the one who’s frightened. She’s leaving
.
And that’s the most dangerous thing she could do
, Daffyd “told” Sally.
No one in the audience moved and Daffyd didn’t dare. The lighting altered subtly, brighter now, and people began
to shake off the deep entrancement, reaching for cigarettes or drinks, starting soft conversation.
“They don’t know she’s not coming back. When they do …”
Daffyd signalled to Sally. It was imperative they leave: they couldn’t risk the psychic distortion of a riot and, once this crowd discovered that the singer wasn’t returning, their contentment would turn to sour savage resentment. Caution governed Daffyd. They couldn’t just leave. But they had to …
He reached across the table casually and deftly tipped the caffeine pot over.
“Of all the stupid jerks,” Sally cried, irritably, getting to her feet and holding her flared skirt from her.
Daffyd rose, too, with many apologies. They received mildly irritated glances from nearby couples whose pleasant mood was disrupted. As Daffyd and Sally moved toward the main door, Sally kept up a running diatribe as to her escort’s awkwardnesses and failings. They reached the sliding doors. The aura generated by the singer was fainter in the lobby and the close knot of men by the box office window interrupted their discussion to stare suspiciously at Daffyd and Sally.
“I can’t sit around in this damp dress,” Sally said in a nasal whine. “It’ll stain and you know it’s only this week’s issue.”
“Hon-love, it’ll dry in a few moments. It was only …”
“You would be clumsy and right now …”
“Let’s just stand outside a bit. It’s warmer. You’ll dry off and we won’t miss any of the singing.”
“If you make me miss any of Amalda’s songs, I’ll never, never forgive you …”
With such drivel they got out the main entrance. But not before Daffyd experienced a wash of such frightful lewd thoughts that he hastily closed off all awareness.
“Sally, how many minorities did you notice represented there?”
“Too many, in view of your memorandum this morning. Daffyd, I’m scared. And it’s not Amalda’s fear this time!”
“I’m calling Frank Gillings.”
Sally pulled from him. “I’ll find the girl. She’s got to have protection …”
“Can you find her?”
“I’m not sure. But I’ve got to try. Once that crowd realizes she’s left …”
Sally turned to the right, toward the rear of the factory, slipping past the little city crawlers until she was out of Daffyd’s sight. He made for his copter and opened the emergency channel to the Center.
Charlie Moorfield was on duty and he instantly patched Daffyd through to the office of Law Enforcement and Order as he was rousing the Center’s riot control people. If they could get enough telepaths to the site in time, they might dampen the incipient riot before LEO needed to resort to the unpopular expedient of gas control.
“Tell Frank Gillings that Roznine is here, too,” Daffyd told the officer on the line.
“Roznine? What’n hell would he be doing listening to a singer?” the man asked.
“If you’d heard the effect this singer has on people, you’d understand.”
The officer swore, at a loss for other words. Daffyd wished that swearing were as therapeutic for him.
“Keep the band open, Charlie …”
“Dave, you can’t stay there …” Charlie’s voice reached Daffyd’s ears even several yards from the copter. Daffyd wished he’d be quiet. He had to concentrate on “listening” for the girl. He could sense Sally’s direction but he was used to Sally’s mind; he could have “found” her at a far greater distance. But the singer was unknown: alarmingly unknown, Daffyd realized, because he ought to be able to “find” her. He’d been in her presence, in “touch” with her for over half an hour, long enough for him to identify most minds and contact them again with
in a mile radius. She couldn’t have got very far away in such a short time.
The beat of heavy duty copters was audible now: coming in without lights and sirens. Daffyd looked east, willing the Center’s fast transports to get here before the riot control squads. It was generally impossible to get enough telepaths during the day to quell an imminent riot unless there’d been a precog of trouble. But, of an evening, there was the entire Center’s telepathic population … Now, if …
He heard the beginning of a subdued murmur from the building. The customers were getting restless. He hoped they hadn’t yet realized that the singer wasn’t taking a short break.
Someone opened a section of the big main doors, stood framed in the rectangle of light for a moment, peering out Daffyd identified the stocky figure as Roznine’s. Suddenly the figure of the ethnic leader froze. He stepped out, into the night head up. The man’s curses floated toward Daffyd as he slammed back into the building. Daffyd hurried in search of Sally, wondering what Roznine would do now he knew a LEO squad was on the way. Only … and Daffyd faltered midstride, how
could
Roznine know, if he did, that the big copters were LEO. Cargo firms used the same type. Yet op Owen knew with unarguable certainty that Roznine had properly identified the aircraft.
Daffyd came round the corner of the old factory just as the personnel hatch in the huge rear door opened. He counted five of the muscle boys, each taking off in a different direction. Then a sixth man, Roznine, whose harsh urgent voice ordered them to find those effing copouts or they’d be subsistence livers for the rest of their breathing days.
‘Copouts.’ Plural, thought Daffyd. Who beside Amalda? No time now for speculation. Daffyd sent a quick warning to Sally to leave off the search and get
back to the copter. She was there when he returned, easily eluding the searching muscle men who were as noisy mentally as they were physically.
“That audience is losing patience fast,” Sally said, staring at the ominous black bulk of the building. She was hugging herself against shivers of fear.
Daffyd looked eastward, saw the running lights of the slim Center transports.
“Not long now.”
But too far away. Disappointment and whetted appetite rocketed to explosive heights. All along their side of the factory, exits burst open as part of the audience swarmed out, in futile search of the singer. Inside the furnishings were being thrown about and broken, people were slugging and slugged, trampled and hurt as uncertain tempers erupted.
Daffyd wasted no time. He half-threw Sally into the copter, jammed in the rocket-lift, warning Sally to hang on. The head LEO copter blared its summons before he could turn on his distinctive identity lights. As it was, he only just got out of stun range.
Once clear of the busy altitudes, Daffyd hovered, calling an “abort” to the Center transports. The situation had gone beyond their capabilities. He’d only completed one circle before he saw that the LEO copters were laying gas. It was all they could do with such a mob starting to rampage. Sally was weeping softly as he veered eastwards toward the Center.
“I wasn’t honestly certain, Daffyd,” Sally said, curled in a small contrite ball on the suspended couch in his quarters. She kept examining her glass as if the amber liqueur were fascinating. She’d the appearance of a small girl trying to get out of a scold. Actually her public mind was wide open to Daffyd’s, permitting him a review of her initial impressions of the singer. “I mean, while I
couldn’t think what else she might be, there was the possibility that it was all sonic amplification. You know what a skilled operator can do.”
“All the more reason you should have reported it, Sally. That kind of manipulation is why mechanical amplification is strictly licensed to reputable and reliable technicians.”