by Andre Norton
She leaned forward, eyes gleaming black with excitement. “What happened?”
Iliff shrugged. “Nothing at all obvious. But somebody did come around almost immediately to look Casselmath over. In fact, they pulled his simple mind pretty well wide open, though the old boy never noticed it. Then they knew he was harmless and went away.”
Pagadan frowned faintly.
“No,” Iliff said, “it wasn’t the Brain! These were stooges, though clever ones—probably the same that were on guard when you probed Tahmey-Deel the first time. But they’ve been alerted now, and I don’t think we could do any more investigating around Deel without being spotted. After your experience on Lycanno, it seems pretty likely that the answers are all there, anyway.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s what I think. So we go to Lycanno!”
Iliff shook his head. “Just one of us goes,” he corrected her. And before her flash of resentment could be voiced he added smoothly, “That’s for my own safety as much as for yours. The Brain must have worked out a fairly exact pattern of your surface mentality by now; you couldn’t get anywhere near him without being discovered. If we’re together, that means I’m discovered, tool”
She thought it over, shrugged very humanly and admitted, “I suppose you’re right. What am I to do?”
“You’re to keep a discreet watch—a very discreet watch—on Deel and his guardians! How Deel manages to be Tahmey, or part of him, at the same time is something the Brain’s going to have to explain to us; and if he has a guilty conscience, as he probably has, he may decide to let the evidence disappear. In that case, try to keep a line on where they take Deel—but don’t, under any circumstances, take any direct action until I get back from Lycanno.”
The black-and-silver eyes studied him curiously. “Isn’t that likely to be quite a while?” Pagadan inquired—with such nice control that he almost overlooked the fact that this politically important nonhuman hothead was getting angry again.
“From what we know now of the Brain, he sounds like one of our tougher citizens,” he admitted. “Well, yes . . . I might be gone all of two days!”
There was a moment of rather tense silence. Then Iliff murmured approvingly:
“See now! I just knew you could brake down on that little old temperament!”
The Lannai released her breath. “I only hope you’re half as good as you think,” she said weakly. “But I am almost ready to believe you will do it in two days.”
“Oh, I will,” Iliff assured her, “with my shipload of specialists.” He stood up and looked down at her unsmiling. “So now if you’ll give me the information you gathered on those top biopsychologists in Lycanno, I’ll be starting.”
She nodded amiably. “There are two things I should like to ask you though, before you go. The one is—why have you been trying to probe through my mind-shields all evening?”
“It’s a good thing to find out as much as you can about the people you meet in this business,” Iliff said without embarrassment. “So many of them aren’t really nice. But your shields are remarkably tough. I got hardly any information at all.”
‘You got nothing!” she said flatly, startled into contradiction.
“Oh, yes. Just a little—when you were giving me that lecture about the Lannai being a proud people and not willing to be protected, and all that. For a moment there you were off guard—”
He brought the captured thought slowly from his mind: the picture of a quiet, dawnlit city—seas of sloping, ivory-tinted roofs, and towers slender against a flaming sky.
“That is Lar-Sancaya the Beautiful—my city, my home-planet,” Pagadan said. “Yes, that was my thought. I remember it now!” She laughed. “You are a clever little man, Zone Agent! What information was in that for you?”
Iliff shrugged. He still showed the form of old Casselmath, the fat, unscrupulous little Terran trader whose wanderings through the galaxy coincided so often with the disappearance of undesirable but hitherto invulnerable citizens, with the inexplicable diversion of belligerent political trends, and the quiet toppling of venal governments. A space-wise, cynical, greedy but somehow ridiculous figure. Very few people ever took Casselmath seriously.
“Well, for one thing that the Lannai are patriots,” he said gloomily. “That makes them potentially dangerous, of course. On the whole, I’m rather glad you’re on our side.”
She grinned cheerfully. “So am I—on the whole. But now, if you’ll forgive a touch of malice, which you’ve quite definitely earned, I’d like the answer to my second question. And that is—what sent that little shock through your nerves when I referred to Tahmey’s probable connection with the Ghant Spacers a while ago?”
Old Casselmath rubbed the side of his misformed nose reflectively.
“It’s a long, sad story,” he said. “But if you want to know-some years back, I set out to nail down the boss of that outfit, the great U-1, no less! That was just after the Confederacy managed to break up the Ghant fleet, you remember—Well, I finally thought I’d got close enough to him to try a delicate probe at his mind—ugh!”
“I gather you bounced!”
“Not nearly fast enough to suit me. The big jerk knew I was after him all the time, and he’d set up a mind-trap for me. Mechanical and highly powered! I had to be helped out of it, and then I was psychoed for six months before I was fit to go back to work.
“That was a long time ago,” Casselmath concluded sadly. “But when it comes to U-1, or the Ghant Spacers, or anything at all connected with them, I’ve just never been the same since!” Pagadan studied her shining nails and smiled sweetly.
“Zone Agent Iliff, I shall bring you the records you want—and you may then run along! From now on, of course, I know exactly what to do to make you jump.”
He sat bulky and expressionless at his desk, raking be jeweled fingers slowly through his beard—a magnificent, fan-shaped beard, black, glossy and modishly curled. His eyes were as black as the beard but so curiously lusterless he was often thought to be blind.
For the first time in a long, long span of years, he was remembering the meaning of fear.
But the alien thought had not followed him into the Dome—at least, he could trust his protective devices here! He reached into a section of the flowing black outer garments he wore, and produced a silvery, cone-shaped device. Placing the little amplifier carefully on the desk before him, he settled back in his chair, crossed his hands on his large stomach and half-closed his eyes.
Almost immediately the recorded nondirectional thought impulses began. So faint, so impersonal, that even now when he could study their modified traces at leisure, when they did not fade away the instant his attention turned to them, they defied analysis except of the most general kind. And yet the unshielded part of his mind had responded to them, automatically and stupidly, for almost an hour before he realized—
Long enough to have revealed—almost anything!
The gems on his hand flashed furious fire as he whipped the amplifier off the desk and sent it smashing against the wall of the room. It shattered with a tiny crackle and dropped to the floor where a spray of purple sparks popped hissing from its crumpled surfaces and subsided again. The thought-impulses were stilled.
The black-bearded man glared down at the broken amplifier. Then, by almost imperceptible degrees, his expression began to change. Presently, he was laughing silently.
No matter how he had modified and adapted this human brain for his purpose, it remained basically what it had been when he first possessed himself of it! Whenever he relaxed his guidance, it reverted automatically to the old levels of emotional reaction.
He had forced it to develop its every rudimentary faculty until its powers were vastly superior to those of any normal member of its race. No ordinary human being, no matter how highly gifted, could be the equal of one who had had the advantage of becoming host-organism to a parasitizing Ceetal! Not even he, the Ceetal, himself was in any ordinary way the equal of this hypert
rophied human intellect—he only controlled it. As a man controls a machine he has designed to be enormously more efficient than himself—
But if he had known the human breed better, he would have selected a more suitable host from it, to begin with. At its best, this one had been a malicious mediocrity; and its malice only expanded with its powers so that, within the limits he permitted, it now used the mental equipment of a titan to pamper the urges of an ape. A scowling moron who, on the invisible master’s demand, would work miracles! Now, at the first suggestion that its omnipotence might be threatened, it turned guilt-ridden and panicky, vacillating between brute fright and brute rages.
Too late to alter that—he was linked to his slave for this phase of his life-cycle! For his purposes, the brute was at any rate adequate, and it often amused him to observe its whims. But for the new Ceetals—for those who would appear after his next Change—he could and would provide more suitable havens!
One of them might well be the spy who had so alarmed his human partner! The shadowy perfection of his mental attack in itself seemed to recommend him for the role.
Meanwhile, however, the spy still had to be caught.
In swift waves of relaxation, the Ceetal’s influence spread through the black-bearded man’s body and back into the calming brain. His plan was roughly ready, the trap for the spy outlined, but his human thought-machine was infinitely better qualified for such work.
Controlled now, its personal fears and even the memory of them neutralized, it took up the problem as a problem—swept through it, clarifying, developing, concluding.
It was quite simple. The trap for this spy would be baited with the precise information he sought. On Gull, meanwhile, Tahmey remained as physical bait for the other spy, the first one—the non-human mind which had escaped by dint of the instantaneous shock-reflex that plucked it from his grasp as he prepared to close in. That the two were collaborating was virtually certain, that both were emissaries of the Confederacy of Vega was a not too unreasonable conjecture. No other organization suspected of utilizing combat-type minds of such efficiency was also likely to be interested in the person of Tahmey!
He was not, of course, ready to defy the Confederacy as yet—would not be for some time. A new form of concealment for Tahmey might therefore be necessary. But with the two spies under control, with the information extracted from them, any such difficulties could easily be met.
The black-bearded man’s hands began to move heavily and unhurriedly over the surface of the desk, activating communicators and recorders.
The plan took shape in a pattern of swift, orderly arrangements.
Four visitors were waiting for him when he transferred himself to the principal room of the Dome—three men and a woman of the tall, handsome Lycannese breed. The four faces turning to him wore the same expression, variously modified, of arrogant impatience.
These and a few others, to all of whom the black-bearded man was known simply as the Psychologist, had considered themselves for a number of years to be the actual, if unknown, rulers of the Lycannese System. They were very nearly right.
At his appearance, two of them began to speak almost simultaneously.
But they made no intelligible sound.
Outwardly, the black-bearded man had done nothing at all. But the bodies of the four jerked upright in the same instant, as if caught by a current of invisible power. They froze into that attitude, their faces twisted in grotesque terror, while his heavy-lidded, sardonic eyes shifted from one to the other of them.
“Must it always affect you like that,” he said in friendly reproach, “to realize what I actually am? Or do you feel guilty for having planned to dispose of me, as a once-useful inferior who can no longer further your ambitions?” He paused and studied them again in turn, and the pleasantness went out of his expression.
“Yes, I knew about that little plot,” he announced, settling his bulk comfortably on a low couch against the wall. He looked critically at his fingernails. “Normally, I should simply have made its achievement impossible, without letting you find out what had gone wrong. But as things stand, Tm afraid I shall be obliged to dispense with you entirely. I regret it, in a way. Our association has been a useful and amusing one—to me, at least! But, well—”
He shook his head.
“Even I make mistakes!” he admitted frankly. “And recent events have made it clear that it was a mistake to involve somewhat ordinary human beings as deeply in my experiments and plans as I involved you—and also that companion of yours, whose absence here may have caused you to speculate. He,” the Psychologist explained good-naturedly, “will outlive you by a day or so!” He smiled. “Oddly enough, his brief continued usefulness to me is due to the fact that he is by far the least intelligent of you—so that I had really debated the advisability of dropping him from our little circle before this!”
His smile broadened invitingly, but he showed no resentment when none of the chalk-faced, staring puppets before him joined in his amusement.
“Well,” he beamed, “enough of this! There are minds on our track who seem capable of reaching you through any defense I can devise. Obviously, I cannot take that risk! Your friend, however, will live long enough to introduce me to one of these minds—another one of your ever-surprising species—who should eventually be of far greater value to me than any of you could hope to be. Perhaps even as valuable as the person you know as Tahmey! Let that thought console you in your last moments—which,” he concluded, glancing at a pearly oblong that was acquiring a shimmering visibility in the wall behind the four Lycannese, “are now at hand!”
Two solidly built men came into the room through the oblong, saluted, and waited.
The black-bearded one gave them a genial nod and jerked his thumb in the general direction of the motionless little group of his disposed associates.
“Strangle those four,” he said, “in turn—”
He looked on for a few moments but then grew bored. Rising from the couch, he walked slowly toward one of the six walls of the room. It began to turn transparent as he approached, and when he stood before it the port-city of Lycanno IV, the greatest city in the Lycannese System, was clearly visible a few thousand feet below.
He gazed down at the scene almost affectionately, savoring a mood of rich self-assurance. For he was, as he had just now proved once more, the city’s absolute master—master of the eight million human beings who lived there; of the two billion on the planet; of the sixteen billion in the System. Not for years had his mastery been seriously challenged!
His lusterless black eyes shifted slowly to Lycanno’s two suns, moving now toward their evening horizon. Scattered strategically through the galaxy, nearly a thousand such suns lighted as many planetary systems, each of which was being gathered slowly into a Ceetal’s grasp. The black-bearded man did not entertain the delusion that Lycanno by itself was an important conquest—no more than each of those other fractional human civilizations. But when the time came finally—
He permitted himself to lapse into a reverie of galactic conquest. But curiously, it was now the human brain and mind which indulged itself in this manner. The parasite remained lightly detached, following the imaginings without being affected by them, alert for some new human foible which it might turn some day to Ceetal profit.
It was, the Ceetal realized again, an oddly complicated organism, the human one! His host fully understood the relationship between them, and his own subordinate part in the Ceetal’s plans. Yet he never let himself become conscious of the situation and frequently appeared to feel an actual identity with the parasite. It was strange such a near-maniac species could have gained so dominant a position in this galaxy!
There was a sudden minor commotion in the center of the room, harsh snoring sounds and then a brief, frenzied drumming of heels on the carpeted floor.
“You are getting careless,” the Psychologist said coldly, without turning his head. “Such things can be done quietly!”
He expected nothing else. Even in such sophisticated and galactic-minded surroundings, his appearance was fantastic to a rather indecent degree. The hairless dome of his head sloped down comically into a rounded snout. He was noseless and apparently earless, and in animated moments his naked yellow scalp would twitch vigorously like the flanks of some vermin-bitten beast.
However, the Old Lycannese harbored a fair selection of similarly freakish varieties of humanity within its many-storied walls—mutant humanity from worlds that were, more often than not, only nameless symbols on any civilized star-map. Side by side with them, indistinguishable to the average observer, representatives of the rarer humanoid species also came and went—on the same quest of profitable trade with Lycanno.
The yellow-faced man’s grotesqueness, therefore, served simply to classify him. It satisfied curiosity almost as quickly as it drew attention; and no one felt urged to get too sociable with such a freak. Whether mutant human or humanoid, he was, at any rate, solvent and had shown a taste for quiet luxury. The hotel saw that he got what he wanted, pocketed his money and bothered its managerial head no further about him.
This curiosity-distracting effect, the yellow-faced man considered, as he strolled across the ground-floor lobby, was almost as satisfactory when it was applied to those who had reason to take a much sharper practical interest in any stranger! Two members of the Psychologist’s bodyguard, behind whom he was heading toward an open elevator which led to the roof-terraces, had scrutinized him swiftly in passing a moment before—but only long enough to re-establish his identity beyond any doubt. They had checked that in detail the previous day—a Talpu, Humanoid, from a system of the Twenty-eighth Median Cluster, dealing in five varieties of gems—three of them previously unknown to Lycanno. Queer-looking little duck, but quite harmless.