A Scatter of Stardust (7 page)

“There’s no mistake.”

“Check anyway.”

He sighed and closed his eyes again and concentrated on the wash of mental emanations rising from the planet below. He had tried to explain to me how it felt, this reception of two billion minds. It was akin, I imagined, to hearing the distant murmur of a crowd, and yet it was more than that. Emotions came sharp and clear. Individual words were lost, but a telepathic race had a gestalt inconceivable to others. It was a crowd, perhaps, but a crowd with a single voice, a single emotion.

There had been no mistake. The Frenzha intended to destroy us, to eliminate us completely. Tolsen was certain of it.

So I gave the order which would eliminate them first.

And, as the bombs tore the very atmosphere from their world, Tolsen went insane from the dying impact of two billion minds.

*

It was something we had never even thought about. A telepath can read the mind of another telepath, can sense and share the emotions and pain of that other. Tolsen didn’t stand a chance. He suffered the relayed sensations of two billion deaths and lived to know the guilt of a murderer two billion times over. And some of it, inevitably, washed over to those around him.

They, superficially at least, had recovered. Tolsen never would.

He was calm enough, drugs had seen to that, but drugs could only make it easier for him to remember, they could not make him forget Even so his hand was shaking as he reached for the bottle with its tablets. I passed him water as he swallowed half a dozen and waited as he drank it.

“Not again, commander!” His eyes were those of a child who begs not to be beaten.

I lit another cigarette.

“You can’t do it again,” he said wildly. “You can’t destroy another race just because they are like what we should be. Because we are mental cripples. Surely, now, that must be obvious. First the Frenzha, now the Lhassa, all telepaths. How many other races are there the same? How many like us?”

“Perhaps none.” I studied the smoke of my cigarette. Space is a lonely place. It gives a man time to think. “Maybe, somehow, we took the wrong turning. Or perhaps we, as a race, had to work a little too hard for survival. Telepathy was a luxury we simply couldn’t afford. You can’t feel sorry for the animal you are killing for dinner. Both Frenzha and Lhassa are — were — soft worlds. The inhabitants herbivorous. They could afford to be gentle.”

“But we are past all that now,” said Tolsen. “Survival no longer demands that we kill and kill and keep on killing.”

“I know that, but our heritage is a part of us. An unknown number of years, an unknown number of generations, all have gone to make us what we are. We couldn’t afford the parapsychological powers. We couldn’t afford to be telepaths. We had to turn away from it in order to stay alive.” I crushed out the cigarette, conscious that I was talking more than I should.

“Then — ”

“There won’t be another Frenzha.”

I rose. It was time to go. My visit to yesterday had stiffened my determination. Malkin met me outside.

“Well?”

“Will he recover? Fully, I mean?”

“Never.” Malkin took my arm. “As an individual he is lost to us, but all is not lost. His seed bears the gene pattern which made him what he was. We’ll find him a girl, one with the same talent if possible. Together they’ll have children.” He drew a deep breath. “No. Tolsen is not wholly lost.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“And you?”

“What do you mean?” I was deliberately casual.

“Rumor gets around. What of the Lhassa?”

“I am in command of the fleet which is being sent to Lhassa,” I said slowly. “On the theory, perhaps, that what I have done once I can do again.”

“John!”

“You said that I’d had a choice when dealing with the Frenzha,” I said. “But it was no real choice and you know it. Did you expect me to permit the destruction of my race?”

“Do you think that you can avoid it?” Malkin was bitter. “We aren’t alone in the universe. How many races do you think we shall be permitted to destroy before we are wiped out as the menace we appear to be?”

“Isn’t that up to you?”

“How so?”

“You, not I, have the answer. It’s up to you to produce the telepaths who will be accepted as ‘normal’ by the aliens. They must be our diplomats, our spokesmen. They must be our shield.” I stared him full in the face. “Produce enough telepaths, and we are safe from retribution and everything else. No telepathic race could ever bring itself to destroy a similar culture. If you doubt that, then go and look at Tolsen.”

“Is that why you came, John?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “There won’t be another Frenzha.”

On the way out I stopped at the desk. The blonde was still there, still petulant, still hurt at the treatment I’d given her. She was snapping at someone on the phone. She looked up, her eyes wary.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish to apologize.”

“For what?”

“For not understanding you.”

“I don’t — ”

“I didn’t know that you were new here. Someone obviously forgot to make out the correct list of permitted visitors. I shouldn’t have lost my temper, but the truth is that I’ve a game leg and it makes me impatient.”

She softened. Her eyes lost their strained wariness. She smiled. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “In space?”

“An accident. They gave me a plastic bone but it gives me hell at times. You know how it is.”

“I know,” she confided. “To tell the truth I’m at fault, too, but my shoes are killing me.”

“Then you forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive.”

We smiled at each other and parted. The exchange had reassured me by strengthening a theory. People can be easy to get along with providing they know more about you than you are normally inclined to tell. If they know your weakness as well as your strength.

As with people, so with races.

I would show the Lhassa more than the destructive might of Earth. I would show them why we needed it, show them how we had risen, driven by fear, unable to tell friend from enemy until, too often, it was too late. They were intelligent creatures. They would understand. And, in the meantime, Malkin would be working.

Earth needed telepaths. Other races were naturally telepathic, so it was logical to assume that humans, too, had those latent powers.

The need for survival had dictated against their development but that need was past. Now it was essential that we catch up.

Survival demanded it.

Little Girl Lost

They showed me the professor and then they told me what they wanted me to do. It wasn’t a hard job, physically that is, but I could see that it would be more than wearing in other ways. I hesitated — they didn’t seem to mind that — then took another look at the professor. That was easy because they had him behind one-way glass.

He was dressing a little girl’s hair. He took his time about it, brushing, combing, weaving the hair into plaits. Two plaits tied with ribbon, and he made hard work of the bows. When he had got them just right he kissed her on the forehead, tickled her under the arms and then sent her out to play.

A nice, normal, everyday scene. The kind of thing every father does if he’s lucky enough to have a little girl. The thing every father has to do if he’s unlucky enough to have lost his wife. Nothing to it.

Only it was two in the morning in the heart of one of the most closely guarded places in the world. There was no brush, no comb, no ribbon.

And no little girl.

“It’s all in his mind,” whispered the colonel. He didn’t have to whisper. The professor couldn’t have heard him had he shouted, but he, like me, felt that he should lower his voice. “To him, she’s still alive, his daughter, I mean. He simply can’t accept the fact that she’s dead.”

“When?”

“Six months ago. Hit-and-run driver; we never did find out who it was.”

“And the mother?”

“Died in childbirth.” The colonel stared through the one-way glass. Inside the soundproofed room the professor had sat down at his desk and was busy with pencil and paper. The colonel sighed, and I limped after him as he led the way back to his office.

Cottrell, the psychologist, was waiting for us and he passed out cigarettes as we sat down.

“Well,” he said tightly, “what’s your reaction?”

“Must I have one?” I accepted a light from the colonel and blew smoke across the desk. “I assume that you’ve a reason for keeping him where he is and I also assume that you’ve a reason for offering me the job.” I looked at the colonel. “Incidentally, why me?”

“Security whitewashed you. The air force didn’t want you. You’ve had acting experience, and you happen to resemble the professor when he was young.” Cottrell spoke before the colonel could answer. “Also, he has a natural sympathy for the afflicted.”

It was too crude to be accidental. The incident which had blasted me out of the skies had left me with a smashed leg, and it isn’t polite to remind a cripple of what he is. I guessed that Cottrell was sore at my getting the offer and said so. He shrugged.

“Sorry, but that’s the answer. It’s important that the professor likes you. He doesn’t like me or any of us here. If you take the job, you’ll have to be closer to him than his own skin and, above all, you mustn’t upset him in any way. It won’t be easy.”

“That’s obvious,” I said. “But why? What’s the point?”

The colonel hesitated and I knew that I was treading on thin ice. Security ice, the sort which cracks if you so much as read the wrong newspaper. But the colonel was intelligent. He knew that no man can do a good job if he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing. He took a chance.

“The professor is important,” he said slowly. “I can’t tell you how much or in just what way, but if I said that the future of this country depended on him I wouldn’t be exaggerating. He was working on...something...when his daughter was killed. The accident upset him. It almost ruined his mind so that, to us, he was useless. He only began to work again when he’d established his delusion.” He looked at me through the smoke of his cigarette.

“He refuses to work here any longer. We can’t force him. We can keep him here, yes, but only as an idiot. We don’t want that. We want the genius of his mind, and to get it we have to play things his way. We have to let him go so that he can work where he likes and when he likes, but we daren’t let him go unprotected. So we want you to stay with him as both friend and bodyguard. You keep him working, you pass on his findings and, above all, you keep him happy.” He sighed. “I know that it sounds crazy, but if you know a better answer I’d be glad to hear it.”

I had no suggestions, only a question. “Does he give any reason for wanting to leave here?”

“Yes.” Cottrell was bitter. “He says that this is no place in which to bring up a young girl. He’s perfectly right, of course, and as we’ve got to humor his delusion, we have no choice but to let him go.”

“And,” said the colonel, “we want you to go with him.”

*

At first things were a little stiff. The professor liked me, yes, but he was not used to having me around, and it was important to break down the barriers of his isolation. The way I did it was to make friends with Ginney.

She was ten years old, a cute blonde with long, plaited hair, a freckled face and cheeky blue eyes. She had been around quite a bit, was full of the devil and loved fun. She also liked plenty of conversation.

She had been dead for six months.

It wasn’t easy to make friends with a ghost. I studied her photographs until I saw her in my sleep. I watched the professor until I knew just how she looked to him. I made myself imagine her, talk to her, listen to her answers and then talk some more. I memorized her history so that we’d have points in common, and all the time I had to guard against a single slip which would have destroyed the professor’s trust in me. That in itself wasn’t too important, but I dared not injure his belief in his delusion. It was the only thing which kept him sane.

I passed the major hurdle one night in a little hotel near the border. We had been traveling south because, as the professor said, Ginney needed the sun. I shared a room with the professor. Another had been booked for Ginney, and he was getting her ready for bed. I’d watched the play a dozen times, the undressing and putting on of the nightclothes, the undoing of the ribbons and the brushing of the hair. I sat and watched as his hands, thin with thick blue veins, the fingers long and sensitive, clutched the invisible brush and smoothed the invisible hair. I leaned forward.

“Let me do that.”

“You?” He hesitated, a flicker of doubt in his eyes.

“Why not?” I grinned, not at him. “You don’t mind me brushing your hair, do you, Ginney?” I pretended to listen, then snorted. “Of course I won’t hurt you. I brush my own hair every day and I’m an expert.” My smile grew wider. “Look, I’ll tell you what. If I catch a snag I’ll tell you a bedtime story. Right?”

I listened, nodded, reached for the brush.

For a moment I thought that it wasn’t going to work. The professor hesitated, moving his hand beyond my reach, the doubt growing in his eyes. Then, very slowly, he moved his hand back toward me.

I took the brush from his hand. I caught hold of Ginney and made her stand in front of me. I turned her and, carefully, I began to brush her hair.

It was the hardest thing I have ever done.

Because it wasn’t enough to playact. I had to really brush the hair of a real girl, and that meant it wasn’t enough just to pass the brush through the air. I had to turn it, to drag it, to move on the same plane, to avoid snags and to follow the contours of a head. I had to do that and, at the same time, control the wriggling of a cheeky ten year old. I had to do all this while being watched by a man who had based his sanity on a delusion which I was helping to maintain. A good pretense wasn’t enough. It had to be perfect.

I was soaked with sweat by the time I had brushed the hair and my hands were trembling with strain. But there was more.

You
caught
a
snag
, said Ginney in my mind.

“I’m sorry,” I said aloud. “I didn’t mean it.”

You
promised
me
a
story.

“I know and I’ll tell you one.”

Now?

“Now.” Deliberately I put down the brush. “Go and kiss your Daddy good night.” I waited while the professor bent his head and then waited just long enough for her to return to me. I rose, stooped, picked her up and carried her toward the door. I opened it awkwardly, as a man would who carried a child, closed it and then, because I daren’t for one moment relax from the pretense, carried her into her bedroom, drew back the covers, tucked her in and sat down on the edge of the bed.

Almost I yielded then, but a sound, it may only have been the creaking of a floorboard or it may have been the professor following me, urged me to continue. So, sitting in the darkness, I told her the story of “The Three Bears,” then “Red Riding Hood,” and then, just to make certain, the one about “Mother Goose.”

When I left that room I needed a drink more than anything else in the world.

The professor was working when I re-joined him. He sat at the table and covered sheet after sheet of paper with abstruse mathematical symbols. The floor was littered with discarded sheets, each one of which I would have to gather and pass on. He smiled at me and laid down his pencil.

“Ginney asleep?”

“Like a top.” I lit a cigarette. “You’ve a very fine girl there, professor.”

“I know it, Tom.” It was the first time that he had used my Christian name. “I’m glad that she’s taken to you.” He stared down at his hands, the veins were very prominent. “I’m really too old for her. Married late, you know, and missed the best part of life. I do my best, but Ginney’s young and needs the company of young people.” He shook his head, sighing. “It isn’t easy.”

“I guess not.”

“No.” He poked at the heap of papers. “Odd, but now I feel as if I can really get down to work. You know what all this is about?”

“No.” I was deliberately casual. I didn’t want to know. I could see that he wanted to talk, but my job was to keep him working and he wasn’t going to do that while I stayed. So I yawned, stretched, and made for the door.

Paper rustled as I closed it behind me.

*

Cottrell was waiting at the rendezvous. He didn’t say anything as I got into the car, but he had a bottle and I took a long drink as he drove to the edge of town. There he halted and, with the motor running, we talked.

“Any luck?”

“He’s working.” Neither of us were, worried about my leaving him alone. The entire area was lousy with security men who would make sure that no one approached him but me. Cottrell reached for the bottle, tilted it, handed it back.

“How did you manage it?”

I told him and he nodded.

“Good. You’ve earned his trust and he’ll be dependent on you. A little more and you’ll have him jumping through hoops. Making friends with his delusion was a bright idea. Don’t forget to use the sympathy angle.”

I looked at him in the light of the dashboard.

“You don’t like me, do you?”

“I don’t like what you’re doing,” he said harshly, and I caught the gleam of his eyes as he faced me. “I don’t like what’s being done to the professor. I’m a doctor of sorts and it’s my job to heal. What would you think of a doctor who deliberately encouraged the growth of a malignant cancer in a man because it increased his I.Q.?”

“Doesn’t that depend on what he does with his increased I.Q.?”

“Maybe.” He seemed torn between the desire to talk and caution against talking too much. Desire won. “I’m sticking my neck out in saying this, but I personally believe that the professor would be better off dead than the way he is. Oh, he’s happy enough while he can maintain his delusion, but what about when it ups and hits him in the face? Anything can do it, a stranger, an incident, any one of a thousand things, and he’ll realize that he’s been living in a dream. Then...” He made a chopping motion.

“The nut house?” He nodded. “So what? Would he be any the worse off?”

“If you can’t live with a thing,” said Cottrell tightly, “you escape from it. The only way the professor can escape is by forgetting. The trouble is he will never be able to forget enough. But he’ll keep on trying until he’s forgotten everything. They call it dementia praecox. It isn’t nice.”

“Then isn’t it better to let him keep his delusion?”

“Not if we want to save his mind.” He looked away from me, his fingers drumming on the wheel. “Don’t misunderstand me. With proper therapy he can be made to accept his loss and learn to live with it. He can be cured of his delusion and mentally he wouldn’t be harmed. But that takes time, and they won’t give him the time. They want what he can do now. So they let him have his dream until he’s done the dirty work and then they’ll drop him like a hot brick.” He must have sensed my disbelief.

“Why not? What better way to safeguard that knowledge than by letting the brain which discovered it lapse into total insanity? What possible use could he be then to any foreign power?”

“It’s too dirty. We wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“No?” He shrugged. “I’ve talked too much and you could get me canned if you wanted to. But I’m a psychologist and I know what makes men tick. One man wouldn’t do it. A group of men would. Split responsibility which means that no one need blame himself and all manage to avoid guilt. Add the desire for security, fear, expediency, patriotism, the natural desire to take the easy path and the even more natural desire to be the top dog, and the professor doesn’t stand a chance. You’ll see.”