“Techniques required to establish the first and second stages of multipliers are classified as Undesirable General Knowledge. Though not infrequently developed independently by Telepaths above the primary level, their employment in any form is prohibited throughout the Confederacy of Vega and variously discouraged by responsible governments elsewhere.
“Establishment of the third stage, and subsequent stages, of impulse-multipliers involves a technique-variant rarely developed by uninstructed Telepaths below the Order of Five. It is classified, under all circumstances, as Prohibited General Knowledge and is subject to deletion under the regulations pertaining to that classification.
“Methodology of the Pyramid Effect may be obtained in detail under the heading `Techniques: Pyramid Effect’—”
The gentle voice subsided.
“Hm-m-m!” said Linky. He glanced about but there was nobody else in immediate range of the information cabinet. He tapped out “Techniques: Pyramid Effect,” and punched.
“The information applied for,” another voice stated tunelessly, “is restricted to Zone Agent levels and above. Your identification?”
Linky scowled, punched “Cancellation” quickly, murmured “Nuts!” and tapped another set of keys.
“Psychimpulse-multiplier,” the gentle voice came back. “Restricted, Galactic Zones. Any person, organic entity, energy form, or mentalized instrument employed in distributing the various types of telepathic impulses to subjects beyond the scope of the directing mentality in range or number—Refer to `Pyramid Effect’—”
That seemed to be that. What else was the Z.A. crying about? Oh, yes!
“Siva Psychosis,” the gentle voice resumed obligingly. “Symptom of the intermediate to concluding stages of the Autocrat Circuit in human-type mentalities—Refer to `Multiple Murder: Causes’—”
Linky grimaced.
“Got what you wanted?” The other clerk was standing behind him.
Linky got up. “No,” he said. “Let’s go anyhow. Your Final Mission came through?”
His friend shook his head.
“The guy got it. Ship and all. The automatic death signals just started coming in. That bong-bong . . . bong-bong stuff always gets on my nerves!” He motioned Linky into an elevator ahead of him. “They ought to work out a different sort of signal.”
* * *
“Understand you’ve been having some trouble with Department of Cultures personnel,” Snoops told the transmitter genially.
“Just one of them,” Pagadan replied, regarding him with disfavor. Probably, he wasn’t really evil but he certainly looked it—aged in evil, and wizened with it. Also, he had been, just now, very hard to find. “That particular one,” she added, “is worse than any dozen others I’ve run into, so far!”
“DC-COIF 1227, eh?” Snoops nodded. “Don’t have to make up a dossier for you on her. Got it all ready.”
“We’ve had trouble with her before, then?”
“Oh, sure! Lots of times. System Chief Jasse—beautiful big thing, isn’t she?” Snoops chuckled. “I’ve got any number of three-dimensionals of her.”
“You would have,” said Pagadan sourly. “For a flagpole, she’s not so bad looking, at that. Must be eight feet if she’s an inch!”
“Eight foot two,” Snoops corrected. “What’s she up to now, that place you’re at—Ulphi?”
“Minding other people’s business like any D.C. Mostly mine, though she doesn’t know that. I’m objecting particularly to her practice of pestering the Fleet for information they either don’t have or aren’t allowed to give for reasons of plain standard operational security. There’s a destroyer commander stationed here who says every time she looks at him now, he gets a feeling he’d better watch his step or he’ll get turned over and whacked.”
“She wouldn’t do that,” Snoops said earnestly. “She’s a good girl, that Jasse. Terribly conscientious, that’s all. You want that dossier homed out to you or right now, vocally?”
“Both. Right now I want mostly background stuff, so I’ll know how to work her. I’d psycho it out of her myself, but she’s using a pretty good mind-shield and I can’t spend too much mission-time on the Department of Cultures.”
Snoops nodded, cleared his throat, rolled his eyes up reflectively, closed them and began.
“Age twenty-five, or near enough to make no difference. Type A-Class Human, unknown racial variant. Citizen of the Confederacy; home-planet Jeltad. Birthplace unknown—parentage, ditto; presumably spacer stock.”
“Details on that!” interrupted Pagadan.
He’d intended to, Snoops said, looking patient.
* * *
Subject, at about the age of three, had been picked up in space, literally, and in a rather improbable section—high in the northern latitudes where the suns thinned out into the figurative Rim. A Vegan scout, pausing to inspect an area littered with the battle-torn wreckage of four ships, found her drifting about there unconscious and half-alive, in a spacesuit designed for a very tall adult—the kind of adult she eventually became.
Investigation indicated she was the only survivor of what must have been an almost insanely savage and probably very brief engagement. There was some messy evidence that one of the ships had been crewed by either five or six of her kind. The other three had been manned by Lartessians, a branch of human space marauders with whom Vega’s patrol forces were more familiar than they particularly wanted to be.
So was Pagadan. “They fight just like that, the crazy apes! And they’re no slouches—our little pet’s people must be a rugged lot to break even with them at three-to-one odds. But we’ve got no record at all of that breed?”
He’d checked pretty closely but without results, Snoops shrugged. And so, naturally enough, had Jasse herself later on. She’d grown up in the family of the scout’s second pilot. They were earnest Traditionalists, so it wasn’t surprising that at sixteen she entered the Traditionalist College on Jeltad. She was a brilliant student and a spectacular athlete—twice a winner in Vega’s System Games.
“Doing what?” inquired Pagadan curiously.
Javelin, and one of those swimming events; Snoops wasn’t sure just which— She still attended the College intermittently; but at nineteen she’d started to work as a field investigator for the Department of Cultures. Which wasn’t surprising either, since Cultures was practically the political extension of the powerful Traditionalist Creed—
They had made her a System Chief only three years later.
“About that time,” Snoops concluded, “was when we started having trouble with Jasse. She’s smart enough to suspect that whatever Galactic Zones is doing doesn’t jibe entirely with our official purpose in life.” He looked mildly amused. “Seems to think we might be some kind of secret police—you know how Traditionalists feel about anything like that!”
Pagadan nodded. “Everything open and aboveboard. They mean well, bless them!”
She went silent then, reflecting; while the alien black-and-silver eyes continued to look at Snoops, or through him possibly, at something else.
He heard himself saying uneasily, “You’re not going to do her any harm, Zone Agent?”
“Now why should I be doing System Chief Jasse any harm?” Pagadan inquired, much too innocently. “A good girl, like you say. And so lovely looking, too—in spite of that eight-foot altitude.”
“Eight foot two,” Snoops corrected mechanically. He didn’t feel at all reassured.
* * *
The assistant to the Chief of G.Z. Office of Correlation entered the room to which his superior had summoned him and found the general gazing pensively upon a freshly assembled illumined case-chart.
The assistant glanced at the chart number and shrugged sympathetically.
“I understand she wants to speak to you personally,” he remarked. “Is it as bad as she indicates?”
“Colonel Dubois,” the general said, without turning his head, “I’m glad you’re here. Yes, it’s just about as bad!” He nodd
ed at the upper right region of the chart where a massed group of symbols flickered uncertainly. “That’s the bulk of the information we got from the Zone Agent concerning the planet of Ulphi just now. Most of the rest of it has been available to this office for weeks.”
Both men studied the chart silently for a moment.
“It’s a mess, certainly,” the colonel admitted then. “But I’m sure the Agent understands that, when an emergency is not indicated in advance, all incoming information is necessarily handled here in a routine manner, which frequently involves a considerable time-lag in correlation.”
“No doubt she does,” agreed the general. “However, we keep running into her socially when she’s around the System, my wife and I. Particularly my wife. You understand that I should like our summation of this case to be as nearly perfect as we can make it?”
“I understand, sir.”
“I’m going to read it,” the general sighed. “I want you to check me closely. If you’re doubtful on any point of interpretation at all, kindly interrupt me at once.”
They bent over the chart together.
“The over-all pattern on Ulphi,” the general stated, “is obviously that produced by an immortalized A-Class human intellect, Sub-Class Twelve, variant Telep-Two—as developed in planetary or small-system isolation, over a period of between three and five centuries.”
He’d lapsed promptly, Colonel Dubois noted with a trace of amusement, into a lecturer’s tone and style. Being one of the two men primarily responsible for devising the psychomathematics of correlation and making it understandable to others, the general had found plenty of opportunity to acquire such mannerisms.
“In that time,” he went on, “the system of general controls has, of course, become almost completely automatic. There is, however, continuing and fairly intensive activity on the part of the directing mentality. Development of the Siva Psychosis is at a phase typical for the elapsed period—concealed and formalized killings cloaked in sacrificial symbolism. Quantitatively, they have not begun as yet to affect the population level. The open and indiscriminate slaughter preceding the sudden final decline presumably would not appear, then, for at least another century.
“Of primary significance for the identification of the controlling mentality is this central grouping of formulae. Within the historical period which must have seen the early stages of the mentality’s dominance, the science of Ulphi—then practically at Galactic par—was channeled for thirty-eight years into a research connected with the various problems of personal organic immortality. Obviously, under such conditions, only the wildest sort of bad luck could prevent discovery and co-ordination of the three basic requirements for any of the forms of individual perpetuation presently developed.
“We note, however, that within the next two years the investigation became completely discredited, was dropped and has not been resumed since.
“The critical date, finally, corresponds roughly to the announced death of the planet’s outstanding psychic leader of the time—an historical figure even on present-day Ulphi, known as Moyuscane the Immortal Illusionist.
“Corroborative evidence—”
The reading took some fifteen minutes in all.
“Well, that’s it, I think,” the general remarked at last. “How the old explorers used to wonder at the frequency with which such little lost side-branches of civilization appeared to have simply and suddenly ceased to exist!”
He became aware of the colonel’s sidelong glance.
“You agree with my interpretation, colonel?”
“Entirely, sir.”
The general hesitated. “The population on Ulphi hasn’t been too badly debased as yet,” he pointed out. “Various reports indicate an I.Q. average of around eleven points below A-Class—not too bad, considering the early elimination of the strains least acceptable to the controlling mentality, and the stultifying effect of life-long general compulsions on the others.
“They’re still eligible for limited membership—capable of self-government and, with help, of self-defense. It will be almost a century, of course, before they grow back to a point where they can be of any real use to us. Meanwhile, the location of the planet itself presents certain strategic advantages—”
He paused again. “I’m afraid, colonel,” he admitted, “that I’m evading the issue! The fact remains that a case of this kind simply does not permit of solution by this office. The identification of Moyuscane the Immortal as the controlling mentality is safe enough, of course. Beyond that we cannot take the responsibility for anything but the most general kind of recommendation. But now, colonel—since I’m an old man, a cowardly old man who really hates an argument—I’m going on vacation for the next hour or so.
“Would you kindly confront the Zone Agent with our findings? I understand she is still waiting on telepath for them.”
* * *
Zone Agent Pagadan, however, received the information with a degree of good nature which Colonel Dubois found almost disquieting.
“Well, if you can’t, you can’t,” she shrugged. “I rather expected it. The difficulty is to identify our Telep-Two physically without arousing his suspicions? And the danger is that no one knows how to block things like a planet-wide wave of suicidal impulses, if he happens to realize that’s a good method of self-defense?”
“That’s about it,” acknowledged the colonel. “It’s very easy to startle mentalities of his class into some unpredictable aggressive reaction. That makes it a simple matter to flush them into sight, which helps to keep them from becoming more than a temporary nuisance, except in such unsophisticated surroundings as on Ulphi. But in the situation that exists there—when the mentality has established itself and set up a widespread system of controls—it does demand the most cautious handling on the part of an operator. This particular case is now further aggravated by the various psychotic disturbances of Immortalization.”
Pagadan nodded. “You’re suggesting, I suppose, that the whole affair should be turned over to Interstellar Crime for space-scooping or some careful sort of long-range detection like that?”
“It’s the method most generally adopted,” the colonel said. “Very slow, of course—I recall a somewhat similar case which took thirty-two years to solve. But once the directing mentality has been physically identified without becoming aware of the fact, it can be destroyed safely enough.”
“I can’t quite believe in the necessity of leaving Moyuscane in control of that sad little planet of his for another thirty-two years, or anything like it,” the Lannai said slowly. “I imagine he’ll be willing to put up with our presence until the Bjanta raids have been deflected?”
“That seems to be correct. If you decide to dig him out yourself, you have about eight weeks to do it. If the Bjantas haven’t returned to Ulphi by then, he’ll understand that they’ve either quit coming of their own accord, as they sometimes do—or that they’ve been chased off secretly. And he could hardly help hitting on the reason for that! In either case, the Senate of Ulphi will simply withdraw its application for membership in the Confederacy. It’s no secret that we’re too completely tied up in treaties of nonintervention to do anything but pull our officials out again, if that’s what they want.”
“The old boy has it all figured out, hasn’t he?” Pagadan paused. “Well—we’ll see. Incidentally, I notice your summation incorporated Lab’s report on the space-fear compulsion Moyuscane’s clamped on Ulphi. Do you have that with you in detail—Lab’s report, I mean? I’d like to hear it.”
“It’s here, yes—” A muted alto voice addressed Pagadan a moment later:
“In fourteen percent of the neuroplates submitted with the Agent’s report, space-fear traces were found to extend into the subanalytical levels normally involved in this psychosis. In all others, the symptoms of the psychosis were readily identifiable as an artificially induced compulsion.
“Such a compulsion would maintain itself under reality-stresses to the point
required to initiate space-fear death in the organism but would yield normally to standard treatment.”
“Good enough,” Pagadan nodded. “Fourteen percent space-fear susceptibility is about normal for that type of planetary population, isn’t it? But what about Moyuscane himself? Is there anything to show, anywhere, that he suffered from the genuine brand of the psychosis—that he is one of that fourteen percent?”
“Well—yes, there is!” Colonel Dubois looked a little startled. “That wasn’t mentioned, was it? Actually, it shows up quite clearly in the historical note that none of his reported illusion performances had any but planetary backgrounds, and usually interior ones, at that. It’s an exceptional Illusionist, you know, who won’t play around with deep-space effects in every conceivable variation. But Moyuscane never touched them—”
* * *
“Telepath is now cleared for Zone Agent 131.71,” the Third Co-ordinator of the Vegan Confederacy murmured into the transmitter before him.
Alone in his office as usual, he settled back into his chair to relax for the few seconds the visualization tank would require to pick up and re-structure Zone Agent Pagadan’s personal beam for him.
The office of the Chief of Galactic Zones was as spacious as the control room of a first-line battleship, and quite as compactly equipped with strange and wonderful gadgetry. As the master cell of one of the half dozen or so directing nerve-centers of Confederacy government, it needed it all. The Third Co-ordinator was one of Jeltad’s busier citizens, and it was generally understood that no one intruded on his time except for some extremely good and sufficient reason.
However, he was undisturbed by the reflection that there was no obvious reason of any kind for Zone Agent Pagadan’s request for an interview. The Lannai was one of the Third Co-ordinator’s unofficial group of special Agents, his trouble-shooters de luxe, whom he could and regularly did unleash in the pits of space against virtually any kind of opponent—with a reasonable expectation of being informed presently of the Agent’s survival and success. And whenever one of that fast-moving pack demanded his attention, he took it for granted they had a reason and that it was valid enough. Frequently, though not always, they would let him know then what it was.
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