“Well, that will make you see to it we don’t get separated,” Telzey said. “I don’t think we should now. Which will it be?”
Thrakell jerked his head sullenly at Neto. “What about her?”
“She’s sure of me,” Neto told him. “Quite, quite sure! She’s already been all through my mind, that’s why!” She laughed.
Essu, round white eyes fixed on Thrakell, reached for a gun on his belt, and Thrakell said hastily, “Let the Tolant have the articles then! I rarely use a weapon, in any case. I detest violence.”
Essu began going over him with his search devices. Telzey and Neto looked on.
Telzey could, in fact, be very sure of Neto. Neto had known no hope of escape from the circuit. She’d lived by careful planning and constant alertness for the past two years, a vengeful, desperate ghost slipping about the fringe areas which would open to the portal keys she’d obtained, as wary of the few wild humans who’d still been around at first as of the Elaigar and their alien servants. There were periods when she no longer believed there was a world outside the circuit and seemed unable to remember what she had done before she met the Elaigar. At other times, she was aware of what was happening to her and knew there could be only one end to that.
Then, once more trailing the murderer who could slip up on you invisibly if you weren’t careful, trying to determine what sort of mischief he was involved in. she’d touched a new mind.
In moments, Neto knew something like adoration. She’d found a protector, and gave herself over willingly and completely. Let this other one decide what should happen now, let her take control, as she began doing at once.
Neto’s stresses dissolved in blind trust. Telzey saw to it that they did.
“Two problems,” Telzey remarked presently. “The diagrams don’t show exits to Tinokti, and they seem to add up to an incomplete map anyway. Then the keys we have between us apparently won’t let us into more than about a fourth of the areas that look worth checking out. We could be one portal step away from an exit, know it’s there, and still not be able to reach it.”
Thrakell said sourly, “I see no way to remedy that! Many sections have a specialized or secret use, and only certain Elaigar leaders have access to them. That might well be the case with sections containing planetary exits. Then there’s the fact that the Alatta intruders have altered the portal patterns of large complexes. I’m beginning to suspect you’ll find yourself no more able to leave the circuit than we’ve been!” He glanced briefly over at Neto.
“Well,” Telzey said, “let’s try to get the second problem worked out first. Essu knows where he can get pretty complete sets of portal packs. But he will need help.”
“What place is that?” asked Thrakell suspiciously. “As far as I know, only the Suan Uwin possess omnipacks.”
“That’s what Essu thinks. These are in a safe in one of Stiltik’s offices. He can open the safe.”
Thrakell shook his head.
“Impossible! Suicidal! The headquarters of the Suan Uwin are closely guarded against moves by political enemies. Even if we could get into Stiltik’s compound, we’d never get out again alive!”
Neto said boredly to Telzey, “Why don’t you lock this thing up somewhere? We can pick him up afterwards, if you feel like taking him along.”
That ended Thrakell’s protests. It wasn’t, in fact, an impossible undertaking. Stiltik used Essu regularly to carry out special assignments which she preferred not to entrust even to close followers. There was a portal, unmarked and unguarded, to which only she and the Tolant had a key. If they were careful, they could get into the headquarters compound.
They did presently. They were then in a small room behind a locked door. To that door again only Stiltik and Essu had keys. Unless Stiltik happened to come in while they were there, they should be safe from detection.
Telzey scanned, while her companions remained behind cover. It took time because she went about it very carefully, touching minds here and there with gossamer lightness. Details gradually developed. At last she thought she’d gathered a sufficiently complete picture.
Elaigar minds were about—some two dozen. There was no trace of Stiltik. The Suan Uwin appeared to be in an interrogation complex with the captured Alatta; and that understandably was a psi-blocked unit. There were Tolant minds and two unfamiliar alien mind types here.
The serfs didn’t count, and the only Elaigar in the central offices were two bored Otessan females, keeping an eye on the working staff. They might notice Essu going into Stiltik’s offices presently, but there was nothing unusual about that. They weren’t likely to be aware he was supposed to be somewhere else.
Another of the minds around might count for a great deal. It was that of Stiltik’s dagen.
In her first encounter with one of those beasts, Telzey had felt and been nearly helpless. She was grateful now for the work she’d put in meanwhile adding to her psi equipment. Her screens hid her from the dagen, and she was able to reach through them toward its mind with delicate sensing probes.
She did. There was no reaction. Cautiously, she began to trace out what she could discern.
The creature was in an enclosure without physical exits. It needed none, of course. On Stiltik’s order, it could flick itself into the enclosure and out again.
It could do very little that wasn’t done on Stiltik’s mental orders. Stiltik had clamped heavy and rigid controls on her monster. A human mind placed under similar controls would have been effectively paralyzed. The dagen’s rugged psyche was in no sense paralyzed. It simply was unable to act except as its handler permitted it to act.
It wasn’t very intelligent, but it knew who kept it chained.
Telzey studied the controls until she was satisfied she understood them. Then she told Essu to go after the omnipacks in Stiltik’s office. She accompanied him mentally, alert for developing problems. Essu encountered none and was back with the packs five minutes later. He’d been seen but disregarded. Nothing seemed to have changed in the headquarters compound.
They left by the secret portal, and Essu handed Telzey its key. She said to the others, “Wait for me here! When I come out, we’ll go back along the route we came—and for the first few sections we’ll be running.”
Thrakell Dees whispered agitatedly, “What are—”
She stepped through the portal into the room. Her mind returned gently to the dagen mind. The beast seemed half asleep now.
Psi sheared abruptly through Stiltik’s control patterns. As abruptly, the dagen came awake. Telzey slipped out through the portal.
“Now run!”
Essu’s haul of portal key packs had been eminently satisfactory. One of them had been taken from Tscharen after his capture. Essu interlocked it with an omnipack, gave the combination to Telzey. She slipped it into a pocket of the Fossily suit. It was small, weighed half as much as Essu’s gun which was in another pocket of the suit. But it would open most of the significant sections of the circuit to her. Essu assembled a duplicate for himself with a copy of Tscharen’s pack, clamped the other keys together at random, and pocketed both sets. Thrakell Dees looked bitter, but said nothing. The arrangement was that he would stay close enough to Essu to pass through any portal they came to with the Tolant. Neto would stay close to Telzey.
“And now?” Thrakell asked.
“Now we’ll pick a route to the hospital area where the Tanvens put me back in shape,” Telzey said. “We still want a guide.”
To be concluded
THE LION GAME
Conclusion. There are times when not even a telepath can be sure who she could trust—and Telzey was trapped in a maze of high-power professional double-dealers. Fortunately, Telzey was a first-class liar herself . . .
SYNOPSIS
Fifteen-year-old Telzey Amberdon learns that the use of a developing psi talent can produce its own class of problems and perils. It’s brought her to the attention of other psis—secretive hostile mentalities which seem to be human
but are different from any human minds she’s touched before. They set a savage animal of unknown type on her trail, a beast which locates its victims by their mental impulses, then teleports through space to materialize beside them.
Telzey tricks the creature into destroying itself and is safe for the moment. But she realizes its masters will continue to look for her and should be able to identify her eventually. She reports her experience to the Federation’s Psychology Service, and agrees to act as bait for the Service while ostensibly going ahead with her normal activities at college. There is no recent record of a psi organization such as she has described, but probability computers indicate she may have encountered descendants of the Elaigar, an artificially produced ogrelike giant human mutant strain, believed to have been nearly exterminated centuries before.
Presently there is a report that several members of the ruling caste on the world of Tinokti have been killed under mysterious circumstances and in a manner suggesting that a beast of the kind set on Telzey’s trail brought about their death. The Service shifts its search for the secret psi organization to Tinokti, and Telzey, under the pretext of gathering material for a college paper, goes there to help hunt for traces of the psis and their activities. Tinokti has a highly developed portal technology—a system of instant transmission from one point of the planetary surface to another—and a good part of its population lives in closed portal circuits, frequently shielded against both physical intrusion and psi probes. This creates an ideal setting for psis intent on operating in concealment.
Telzey promptly picks up impressions of psi minds of the type being sought. However, before the Service can develop this lead, she finds herself switched out of one portal circuit and trapped in another one. Her contacts with Service personnel have been cut off, and she is the prisoner of four psis, three men and a woman, who are giants by ordinary human standards but lack the bulk and the frightening appearance of the legendary Elaigar. The woman gives her name as Kolki Ming, saying that Telzey will remain for the present in the custody of Tscharen, one of her male companions, and that explanations will be made later. Tscharen and Telzey set off through the strange circuit and almost immediately are ambushed by another group of giants, some of whom resemble Tscharen and his associates, while others are unmistakably the ogrelike Elaigar. Tscharen is taken away, and Telzey finds herself confronting Stiltik, a female High Commander of the Elaigar. When she refuses to open her mind for
Stiltik’s inspection, the giantess mauls her savagely into unconsciousness.
Awakening under the expert ministrations of an alien physician, Telzey cautiously taps various minds in her vicinity, learns that she is under guard in an isolated section of a great portal circuit occupied by the Elaigar and their alien serfs, and that Stiltik, engaged with Tscharen at the moment, intends to send for her presently to interrogate her. This gives Telzey a limited amount of time to make hey own preparations. Physically restored by the physician, she has a narrow escape from a deranged old Elaigar being held in isolation, then takes Essu, her humanoid guard, under mental control and sends him off to get map diagrams of the circuit. She knows by now that the ogrelike giants, called Sattarams, are the mature form of the Elaigar, and that their life span, as compared to the normal human one, is very short. The lesser giants, called Otessans, are adolescent Elaigar. Finally, Tscharen, Kolki Ming, and the other two who switched Telzey into the circuit, are Alattas, a mutated Elaigar strain which retains the adolescent aspect throughout life. Telzey’s informants know little about the Alattas beyond the fact that they and the true Elaigar are enemies. Kolki Ming and her two remaining companions, now known to be Alatta agents masquerading as Otessans, have withdrawn into a section of the circuit they’ve made impassable to pursuers by scrambling portal patterns. Disposing of them has become a point of honor both for Stiltik and for her fellow High Commander, Boragost, with whom she is engaged in a ruthless struggle for power.
Telzey has been joined meanwhile by two “wild” humans, Thrakell Dees and Neto Nayne-Mel, who have managed to survive independently in the Elaigar circuit. Telzey is suspicious of Thrakell, who has the psi ability to block awareness of his presence from the minds of those he encounters and who has used the ability in an apparent attempt to take her by surprise. When Essu returns with the maps, she has him disarm Thrakell. Then the four of them set off together to obtain another item they need to be able to move freely about the great circuit: a complete set of portal keys. They are to be had in Stiltik’s headquarters. The undertaking is dangerous not only because of the possibility of being detected by the Elaigar but because the headquarters area is guarded by a teleporting beast such as the one that nearly destroyed Telzey. Uncontrolled, the creatures, known as dagens or mind hounds, are as dangerous to the Elaigar as to anyone else. This specimen, however, is Stiltik’s personal dagen and held under rigid mental controls by her.
They reach the headquarters area without incident, and Essu manages to obtain several sets of portal keys. Telzey meanwhile has been studying the psi controls which keep the dagen subservient to Stiltik. When they’re ready to leave, she shears abruptly through the controls, and they get out of the area as quickly as possible then. They head next for the section of the circuit where Telzey had her encounter with the deranged old Elaigar. She’s decided to turn him into an assistant.
Part 2
VIII
The Third Planetary Exit control room was quiet. Telzey was at the instrument stand, watching the viewscreen. Thrakell Dees sat on the floor off to her left, with his back to the wall. He was getting some of her attention. A Sattaram giant was near the door behind her. He needed no attention—he was lying on his back and very dead.
In a room on the level below them, Neto and Korm, one-time Suan Uwin of the Elaigar, waited behind a locked door. Some attention from Telzey was required there from moment to moment, mainly to make sure Korm kept his mind shield tight. He’d been out of practice too long in that matter. Otherwise, he seemed ready to go. Neto was completely ready to go.
The viewscreen showed the circuit exit area on the other side of the locked door. The portal which opened on Tinokti was within a shielded vaultlike recess of a massive square structure a hundred yards across—mainly, it seemed, as a precaution against an Alatta attempt to invade the circuit at this point. The controls of the shielding and of the portal itself were on the instrument stand, and Telzey was ready to use them. She was also ready to unlock the door for Neto and Korm.
She couldn’t do it at the moment. Something like a dozen Elaigar stood or moved around the exit structure. They were never all in sight at the same time, so she wasn’t sure of the number. It was approximately a dozen. Most of them were Otessans; but at least three Sattarams were among them. Technically, they were on guard duty. Telzey had gathered from occasional washes of Elaigar thought that the duty was chiefly a disciplinary measure; these were members of visiting teams who’d got into trouble in the circuit. They weren’t taking the assignment very seriously, but all wore guns. About half of them might be in view along the front of the structure at any one time. At present, only four were there.
Four were still too many. Essu would have been useful now, but Essu was dead. Korm had been leading them through a section like a giant greenhouse, long untended, when they spotted a Boragost patrol coming toward them and realized an encounter couldn’t be avoided. The troops handled it well. Telzey and Thrakell didn’t take part in the action, and weren’t needed. The patrol—a Sattaram, an Otessan, six or seven Tolants—was ambushed in dense vegetation, wiped out in moments. Korm gained a Sattaram uniform in Boragost’s black and silver, which was better cover for him than what he was wearing. And Telzey lost Essu.
She spared a momentary glance for Thrakell Dees. He was watching her, face expressionless.
When they’d taken the control room, looked at the situation in the exit area, she’d said to him, “You realize we can only get Neto through here. You and I’ll have to get away and do something
else.”
Korm wouldn’t accompany them—that was understood by everyone in the room but Korm.
Thrakell hadn’t argued, and Telzey wasn’t surprised. She’d been studying him as she’d studied Korm on the way, trying to draw in as much last-minute information on a number of matters as she could. It had seemed to her presently that Thrakell Dees didn’t really intend to leave the Elaigar circuit. Why he’d approached her originally remained unclear. What he mainly wanted now was one of the portal omnipacks she carried, the one Essu had assembled for her, or the one she’d taken from Essu after he was killed.
Thrakell had mentioned it, as a practical matter, after Korm and Neto took up their stations on the lower level, and they were alone in the control room.
“Thrakell,” she’d said, “I need you as a guide now. There’s a place I want to go to next, and it seems to be about as far from this part of the circuit as one can get. I might find it by myself with the maps, but it’ll be faster with you. We’ve already spent too much time. I want to be there before anyone starts hunting for me.”
Thrakell blinked slowly.
“What’s the significance of the place?”
“The Alattas switched me into the circuit by a portal,” Telzey said. “It may still be there and operational. If it is, you can get back to Tinokti, if you like. Or you can have one of the omnipacks—after you’ve let me look into your mind. That’s still a condition. We can split up at that point. Not yet.”
Thrakell stared at her a moment.
“I had the curious impression,” he remarked, “that you’d decided before we got here you wouldn’t be using this exit yourself to leave the circuit. The degree of control you’ve been exercising over Korm and Neto Nayne-Mel shows you could have arranged to do it, of course. I’m wondering about your motivation.”
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 239