“Well, I won’t tell.”
“I know you won’t. You think it might mean I’m a kind of telepath?”
“It might,” Telzey said. “It wouldn’t have to. They may simply have themselves tuned in on you.” She stood a moment, reflecting. “I ran into a heavy-duty psi once who didn’t have the faintest idea he was one,” she said. “It was a problem because all sorts of extraordinary things kept happening to him and around him. Right now, anything like that could be disturbing.”
Trigger looked concerned. “Have there been disturbances?”
“I haven’t noticed anything definite,” Telzey said untruthfully. “But I’ve been wondering.”
“Could you find out about me if I undid that mind shield they gave me?”
Telzey sat down. “Let’s try,” she said.
Trigger wished the shield out of existence. Some little time passed. Then Telzey said, “You can put the shield back.”
“Well?” Trigger asked. “Am I?”
“You are,” Telzey said absently. “I thought you might be, from the way you’ve been worrying about the Sirens.” She shook her head. “Trigger, that’s the most disorganized psi mind I’ve ever contacted! I wonder why Pilch never mentioned it.”
Trigger hesitated. “Now that you’ve mentioned it,” she said. “I believe Pilch did suggest something of the kind on one occasion. I thought I’d misunderstood her. She didn’t refer to it again.”
“Well, if you like,” said Telzey, “we can take a week off after we’re through with the Siren, and see if we can’t make you operational.” Trigger rubbed her nose tip. “Frankly,” she said, “I doubt that I’d want to be operational.”
“Why?”
“You and Pilch seem to thrive on it,” Trigger said, “but I’ve met other psis who weren’t cheery people. I suppose you can pick up a whole new parcel of problems when you have abilities like that.”
“You pick up problems, all right,” Telzey acknowledged.
“That’s what I thought. And I,” Trigger said, “seem to find all the problems I can handle without adding complications. Could that disorganized psi mind of mine do anything to disturb you when you’re trying to work with the Siren?”
Telzey shook her head. Trigger, psi-latent, hadn’t been unconsciously responsible for those manifestations, couldn’t have been. Neither was the Siren. This time, there’d been, for a moment, a decidedly human quality about the immaterial presence.
So the Psychology Service was keeping an eye on proceedings here. She’d half expected it. And they’d assigned an operator of exceptional quality to the job—she couldn’t have prowled about an alerted telepath and remained as well concealed.
Nor, Telzey thought, was that the only concealed high-quality psi around. While Trigger was talking about the Old Galactics, she’d recalled that flick of mind-stuff she caught the moment the Siren container came unshielded in the Haplandia Hotel.
It seemed the Old Galactics, too, had an interest in the Siren specimen, and were represented in the summer house . . .
Did either of them know about the other? Did the Siren entity know about either of them, or suspect it had an occupant? It was nothing she could mention to Trigger—there was too much psi involved all around, and Trigger’s surface thoughts were accessible to any telepath who wanted to follow them.
She’d have to await developments—and meanwhile push ahead toward the probe. Around that point, everything should start falling into place. It would have to.
She told Trigger what she’d accomplished so far, added, “I’ve probably got the contact process started. This afternoon I’ll pick the symbol up again and see.” She yawned, stretched slowly. “How about we go for a long walk before lunch? This is great hiking country.”
They went down to the end of the grounds, past the house where Ezd Malion and his wife lived, and on to the banks of the lake. The sun was out that morning; it was chilly, blustery, refreshing. They followed narrow trails used more often by animals than by people. It was over an hour before they turned back for lunch.
Early in the afternoon then, Telzey went into the study and closed the door. She emerged four hours later.
Trigger regarded her with some concern. “You look pretty worn out!”
“I am pretty worn out,” Telzey acknowledged. “It was hard work. Let’s go have some coffee, and I’ll tell you.”
She’d picked up her symbol with no trouble—a good sign. She settled her attention on it, and waited. There’d been changes, she decided presently. It was as if a kind of life were seeping into the symbol, accumulating there. Another good sign. No need to push it now; she was moving in the right direction.
That might have gone on about an hour. Physically Telzey was feeling a little uncomfortable by then, which again could be counted, technically, a good sign, though she didn’t like it. There was a frequent shivering on her skin, moments when breathing seemed difficult, other manifestations of apprehension. What it meant was that she was getting close.
Then there was an instant when she wasn’t close, but there. Or it was there. The symbol faded as what had been behind it came slowly through. This was no visualization, but reality as sensed by psi. It was the darkness, the cold, in the false emptiness. It simmered with silent power. It was eminently forbidding.
It was there—then it wasn’t there. It seemed to have become nonexistent.
But she needed no symbols to return to it now. What she had contacted, she could contact again. It was in her memory; and memory was a link. She could draw herself back to it.
She did, quickly lost it once more. Now there were two links. All she needed was patience.
Any feeling of passing time, all awareness of the room about her, of the chair in which she sat, even of her body, was gone. She was mind, in the universe of mind where she moved and searched, tracing the thing she had contacted, finding it, establishing new connections between herself and it. She lost it again and again, but each time it was easier to find, less difficult to hold. It was a great fish, and she a tiny fisherman, not fastening the fish to herself, but herself to the fish. Finally, the connection was stable, unchanging. When she was sure of that, she broke it. She could resume it whenever she chose.
At that point, she became conscious of the other reality, of her physical self and her surroundings.
And—once more—of having uninvited company.
This time, she ignored the presence. It faded quietly from her awareness as she opened her eyes, sat up in the armchair . . .
“I think we’re almost there,” she told Trigger. “The thing’s a structure, a psi structure. It’s what the Service xenos found and tried to probe. And I can believe it bounced them—it’s really charged up!”
“You’re going to try to probe it?” Trigger asked.
Telzey nodded. “I’ll have to. There’s been no mind trace of the Siren, so that structure must act as its shield. I’ll have to try to work through it. How, I won’t know till I find out what it’s like.” She was silent a moment. “If it bounces me, too, I don’t know what else we can do,” she said. “But we’ll start worrying about that then. I do have very good shields. And if I can get one solid contact with the Siren mind, we may have the problem solved. Unless they’re basically murderous, of course. But I agree with you that they don’t really seem to be that.”
There were other factors involved. But that was still nothing to talk to Trigger about. “So everything’s set up for the probe now,” Telzey concluded. “Next time I’ll try it. But I want to be a lot fresher for that, so it won’t be tonight. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow.”
They turned in early. Telzey fell into sleep at once, like drifting deep, deep down through a cool dark quiet sea . . . Some time later then, she found herself standing in the Siren’s container.
It wasn’t exactly the container, though there was a shadowy indication of its walls in the distance. A kind of cold desert stretched out about her, and she stood at the base of the S
iren. A Siren which twisted enormously up into an icy sky, gigantic, higher than a mountain, huge limbs writhing. A noise like growing thunder was in the air; the desert sand shook under her, and her feet were rooted immovably in the sand. Then she saw that the Siren was tilting, falling toward her, would crush her. She heard herself screaming in terror.
She awoke.
She sat up in bed, breathing in quick short gasps. She looked around the dark room, reached for the light switch. As she touched it, light blazed in the hall beyond the door “Trigger?” she called.
From the direction of Trigger’s room came a shaky “Yes?”
“Wait a moment!” Telzey climbed out of bed, started toward the door. Trigger met her there, robe wrapped around her, face pale, hair disheveled. “What’s the matter?” Telzey asked.
Trigger tried to smile. “Had a dream—a nightmare. Whew! Going down to the kitchen for some hot milk to settle myself.”
“A nightmare?” Telzey stared at her. “Wait—I’ll come along.”
They’d had the same dream. A dream apparently identical in all respects, except that in Trigger’s dream, it was Trigger who was about to be crushed by the toppling monster Siren. Sitting in the kitchen, sipping their hot milk, they discussed it, looking at each other with uncertain eyes. Something had come into their minds as they slept—
“That Old Galactic shield of yours,” Telzey pointed out, “is supposed to keep anything from reaching your subconscious mind processes—which includes the dream mechanisms.”
Trigger gave her a startled glance.
“Unless I allow it!” she said. “And I think I did allow it.”
“What?”
Trigger nodded, frowned, trying to remember. “I was half asleep,” she said slowly. “Something seemed to be telling me to dissolve the shield. So I did.”
“Why?”
Trigger shrugged helplessly. “It seemed perfectly all right! I wasn’t surprised or alarmed—not until I started dreaming.” She reflected, shook her head. “That’s all I remember. I suppose there was another of those ghost structures floating around?”
Telzey nodded, “Probably.” She couldn’t recall anything that had happened before she started dreaming. “Some general impression—warning, threat,” she said. “With a heavy fear charge.”
“How could we have turned that into the same dream?”
Telzey said, “We didn’t. Your mind was wide open. I’m a telepath.” A dream could be manufactured in a flash, from whatever material seemed to match the impulse that induced it. “One of us whipped up the dream,” she said. “The other shared it. We came awake almost at once then.”
“That Siren,” said Trigger after a moment, “really doesn’t want to be probed.”
“No, not at all. And it may be aware that I’ve got as far as its shield.”
Two other psi minds around here, Telzey thought, should also be aware of that fact. The Psychology Service would hardly be trying to discourage her from the probe. But the observer the Old Galactics had left planted in the Siren might have some reason for doing it—and might have the ability to induce a warning nightmare. She wished she had some clue to the interest that ancient race was taking in the Sirens.
They finished their milk, sat talking a few minutes longer, decided there was no sense sitting up the rest of the night, and went back to bed. They left the light on in the hall outside their rooms. Somewhat to Telzey’s surprise, she felt herself fall asleep again almost as soon as her head touched the pillow.
VIII
They awoke to a disagreeable day. The sky was gloomy; a wind blew in cold gusts about the house; and there were intermittent falls of rain. Breakfast was a silent affair, each withdrawn into her thoughts. When they’d finished, Trigger went to a window and looked out. Telzey joined her. “Gruesome weather!” Trigger remarked darkly. “I feel depressed.”
“So do I,” said Telzey.
Trigger glanced at her. “You don’t think it’s the weather, do you?”
“No.”
“It’s in the house all around us,” Trigger said, nodding. “I’ve felt it since I woke up. As if there were something unpleasant about that I might see or hear at any moment. More of that ghost stuff, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It may wear off.” But Telzey wasn’t so sure it would wear off, and whether the entity behind the psi block wasn’t reaching them now through the block. This was a subtler assault on their nerves, the darkening of mood, uneasiness, a prodding of anxieties—all too diffused to counter.
An hour later, it didn’t seem to be wearing off. “You shouldn’t try the probe while you’re feeling like this, should you?” Trigger asked.
Telzey shook her head. “Not if I can help it—but I don’t think I should put it off too long either.”
They were vulnerable, and they’d stirred something up. Even left alone, it wouldn’t necessarily settle down. It might keep undermining their defenses for hours, or shift to a more definite attack. The probe must be attempted, and soon. The Sirens existed, were an unpredictable factor; something had to be done. If she waited, she might be reduced to incapability. That could be the intention.
“Let’s go outside and tramp around a while,” Trigger said. “Maybe it will cheer us up. I usually like a good rainy day, really.”
They donned rain capes and boots, went down to the lake. But the walk didn’t cheer them up. The wind stirred the cold lake surface, soughed through the trees about them. The sky seemed to be growing darker; and the notion came to Telzey that if she looked closely enough, she’d be able to make out the giant Siren of their dream writhing among distant clouds. She stopped short, caught Trigger by the arm.
“This isn’t doing any good!” she said. “It’s focused on us, and we’re dragging it around with us here. Let’s go back, pick up swim gear, and clear out! I know a beach where it won’t be rainy and cold. We can be there in an hour.”
They sped south in the Cloudsplitter and came down on a beach, golden and hot under a nearly cloudless sky. The wind that swept it was a fresh and happy one. They swam and tumbled in the surf, spirits lifting by the minute. They came out and sunned, talked and laughed, swam again, collected a troop of bronzed males, let themselves be taken to lunch, shook off the troop, fled fifty miles east along the beach, went back to the water for a final dip where breakers rose high, emerged exhausted and laughing ten minutes later. “Now let’s go tackle that Siren!”
They flew north again, dropping down at a town en route to buy two tickets to the currently most popular live show in Orado City, lust what would happen when the probe began seemed a rather good question. Enough had happened, at any rate, to make them feel the Malions shouldn’t be anywhere in the area at the time. They stopped off at the caretaker’s house, explained they’d intended taking in the show that night, but found they couldn’t make it; so there were two expensive tickets on hand which shouldn’t go to waste. Ezd and wife were on their way to Orado City thirty minutes later.
Parked at the northern end of the grounds, Telzey and Trigger watched the caretakers leave. The Cloudsplitter lifted then, slid down into the carport of the summer house. They went in.
The house was quiet. If anything had taken note of their return, it gave no indication. They got arranged quickly in the study. Trigger would be sitting in on this session. The finicky part of the work was done; someone else’s presence, the subtle whisper of half-caught surface thoughts and emotional flickerings nearby when her sensors were tuned fine, could no longer be a distraction to Telzey. And company would be welcome to both of them now. Trigger took a chair to the right of the one Telzey had been using, a dozen feet away. “Ready?” Telzey asked from beside the Siren container.
Trigger settled herself. “When you are.”
Telzey switched off the psi block. Something came into the study then. Telzey glanced at Trigger. No, Trigger hadn’t noticed. Telzey went slowly to her chair, sat down.
The presence was back. That didn’t surprise her.
But Trigger . . .
She looked over at Trigger. Trigger gave her a sober smile. There was alert intelligence in her expression, along with concern she wasn’t trying to hide. Trigger, undeniably, was in that chair, aware and awake. But in a sense she’d vanished a moment ago. The normal tiny stirrings of mind, of individuality, had ceased. There was stillness now, undisturbed.
Telzey slid a probe toward the stillness. It didn’t seem to touch anything, but it was stopped. She drew it back.
A shield of totally unfamiliar type. Trigger evidently didn’t realize it was there. But it sealed her off from outside influences like indetectable heavy armor.
Things had begun to add up.
Telzey checked her own safeguards briefly. Mind screens which might be the lightest of veils, meant only to obscure her from psi senses while she peered out, so to speak, between them. Or, on other occasions, tough and resilient shields which had turned the sharpest probe she’d ever encountered and held up under ponderous onslaughts of psi energy. They could shift in an instant from one extreme to the other. Sometimes, though rarely now, they disappeared completely.
She restored contact—and it was back at once before her: the cold darkness, the emptiness that wasn’t empty, the sense of forbidding, repelling power. She scanned cautiously along the impression but could make out no more about it than before.
So then the initial probe! A sensing psi needle reached, touched, drove in, withdrew. As it withdrew, something wrenched briefly and violently at Telzey.
She waited. The xenotelepathic faculty was an automatic one, operating in subconscious depths beyond her reach. She didn’t know why it did what it did. But when she touched an alien mind, it began transforming alien concepts to concepts sufficiently human in kind so that she understood them; and if she wanted to talk to that mind, it turned her concepts into ones the alien grasped. Usually the process was swift; within a minute or two there might be the beginnings of understanding.
No understanding came here. Her screens had gone tight as something gripped and twisted her. When she relaxed them deliberately again, nothing else happened.
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 216