The Best of Argosy #7 - Minions of Mercury

by William Grey Beyer

  The king’s face twisted in rage. Mark smiled at the contortion, and that only served to make it worse. Vargo went white and began to tremble.

  Then suddenly he seemed to regain control of himself. In the space of a few seconds he changed from a man on the verge of an apoplectic stroke to the kindly, benevolent old fellow he had been a few minutes ago.

  “I’ll submit to your hypnosis,” he finally said. “And you’ll teach me to fly; nothing else!” Vargo broke off and fell to chuckling evilly. It was some minutes before he said anything coherent. “The great Vargo can see to that. Do you want to know how?”

  “How?”

  Vargo fell into another fit of chuckling.

  “Simple. Oh, so terribly simple. I should have thought of it sooner. First you shall be hypnotized!

  “Don’t smile. You can be hypnotized. There are twenty trained hypnotists on my Vocation Board. Once I placed two of them en rapport in the course of an experiment. They were able to put down the resistance of a third man by combining their power. And that man was very strong, too.

  “Tomorrow I will place all twenty of them en rapport. Together, they will break your resistance. Then, while under their power, you will teach me to fly. In fact, you’ll teach me all you know. Take him away!”

  MARK was a very worried man when he was placed in a dungeon in the lowermost basement of the palace.

  There were several good reasons for this. The most important was the fact that for once he found himself in a cell which seemed to be escape-proof — even for him it was a large affair, dimly lighted through a small, square hole in the heavy, stone door.

  Entirely composed of granite, damp and cold, the cell would have held twenty people, and have held them until Doomsday. The heavy door would have withstood the battering of a pile-driver.

  Mark had a notion that he could force the thing by utilizing the means which had pushed the elevator through the roof; but that was impractical. Guards placed at the ends of the passageway outside his cell would be attracted by the noise and fill him with lead before he could get out.

  Another reason for his mental turmoil was the fact that he didn’t dare stay here and face the very real possibility that the twenty hypnotists of Vargo might overcome him. If they did, and learned that he had been bluffing, Vargo would cook his goose thoroughly.

  Not only that, but they would learn all the plans of the fraternity as well. That would be the end of everything.

  Angrily he paced back and forth in the cell, trying to think a way out of his difficulties.

  But angry pacing, it seemed, wasn’t conducive to clear thinking. He stopped, after a few moments, and made an intelligent survey of the cell. But that brought nothing, either. If was just as solid as before.

  It was damnable.

  The only thing he noticed that he hadn’t seen before was a narrow crack which extended for a foot or so at the bottom of one wall. That didn’t help a bit. It merely indicated that the monstrous slab of rock which formed that wall didn’t fit quite as snugly as it might.

  If this were above ground he might try to use the vast energy at his command to force the wall outward; but that would be senseless if solid earth was back of the stone. Even if he did force it silently, there would be no way out.

  Absently he examined the door. It was solid and fitted like the case of a watch. He had seen the heavy iron bar which secured it on the outside and knew that there was no way of reaching it. The small hole was large enough to pass his arm through but was located too high to be of any use. His arm wouldn’t be long enough to reach the bar.

  Mark swore.

  To think better he tried sitting down on the floor; gave that up because it was uncomfortably damp. His eyes happened on the crack in the opposite wall and he noticed that several roaches had decided to investigate his presence. At least there were quite a few of them on the floor near the crack, though of course they might only be searching for crumbs.

  Quietly he crossed the cell and put an end to their existence. Mark didn’t like roaches, even in dungeons. He stamped the life out of a dozen or two before the rest escaped into the crack. That, he hoped, would discourage any further exploration.

  It didn’t, as he noticed in a few minutes.

  The next explorer wasn’t a roach however. It was a mouse, small and clumsily fat. Mark scuffed a foot, expecting to see it dart back into the crack. The mouse only looked up, as if slightly startled, and regarded him insolently.

  Then it approached one of the defunct roaches and hit it once with a paw. It repeated this operation haphazardly with several more; then, apparently decided that they weren’t very good sport, and left them alone.

  Next act of the mouse was to waddle closer to Mark and inspect him carefully. Finally he sniffed, as if contemptuous of a mere man, and went back to the roaches, smacking them around some more.

  MARK watched with interest, glad to give his mind a brief rest from its many problems. Suddenly he noticed that the dead roaches were apparently falling into a pattern as the mouse pushed them around.

  He took a step closer to make sure that the dim light wasn’t playing tricks on his eyes. The mouse paid no attention, other than to sniff irritatingly.

  Sure enough, a dozen or so of the roaches were arranged so as to form two letters of the alphabet — D and O. Roughly, to be sure, and probably accidentally; but Mark nevertheless watched closely to see if the mouse did anything else significant.

  But apparently he didn’t intend to do so. He looked up at Mark as if to say that he didn’t think much of the human race in general, for he raised his head in a disdainful manner and sniffed again, this time pointedly. Then he resumed his game, wrecking the two letters he had formed.

  Mark was about to give him a swift kick in the place where his pants would be if he wore any, when he suddenly noticed that the mouse had formed more patterns. Letters again — this time a P and an E. Once more interested, Mark watched closely. But the mouse quit his game and sat up on his hind legs as if waiting for applause.

  Suddenly Mark swore. It had occurred to him that the four letters spelled a word, and a darned appropriate one at that.

  “All right, toots,” he growled. “I know you’re not a man, but you don’t have to be a mouse, either.

  “Omega,” Mark said.

  At this recognition of his peculiar talents, the mouse swelled pridefully. In fact, he continued to swell. In the twinkling of an eye he reached the size of a man, Then he melted a bit around the edges and actually became a man — the aged one which Omega delighted in being.

  “But you’re a dope,” he said, amiably. “Any way you look at it. You let Vargo beat you again. The trouble is that you refuse to utilize your powers. You have a brain and you don’t use it. You have telekinesis, and you don’t use that, either. You could have licked him easily. You could have dropped the roof on him.”

  Mark shook his head. “As a last resort maybe,” he admitted. “But I want him alive. I want to hypnotize him and make him spend the rest of his life correcting the wrongs he’s committed. Once I get a chance to hypnotize him, I’ll make him a model citizen, interested in the people’s welfare and anxious to do what’s right by them. I’ll put his genius to good use.

  “Then I’ll release the Ancestors. They’ll be glad to undo some of the work they’ve done in the past thirty years. For one thing, they should be able to do something about the growth ray. They’ll have to find some way of making it harmless to the men who operate it.

  “There’s a hundred things to be done, and they hinge, for the most part, on keeping Vargo alive.”

  Omega nodded. “Good idea. You do use your brain, after all. But not as much as you might. Telekinesis, for instance. It could get you out of this cell.”

  “How?”

  “Lots of ways. Think it out for yourself. I just dropped in to bawl you out, not to help you. Don’t you think I have other things to do?”

  Mark frowned, quite exasperated, for Omega’s “
other things” didn’t seem nearly as important as getting out of this dungeon.

  The old man faded slightly and turned into a beautiful flower girl, complete with a basket of flowers, which she proceeded to toss gayly about as she danced lightly over the damp floor. The lighthearted tune which she sang to accompany her dance had a lyric which would have blistered the ears of a caravan driver. It furnished, in fact, such a sour note to an otherwise perfect performance that Mark had difficulty concentrating on a way to use telekinesis to get out of the cell.

  And he knew very well that Omega intended to stick around until he solved the problem.

  He did, however, hit upon an idea. Omega had told him that he would have to teach himself the many things which could be done with the power, aside from the most simple one of moving matter by means of the waves.

  Creation of matter was one of the biggest uses of the energy. Destruction of matter was another. If he could use that one, he could dissolve the iron bar which held the door. But could he do it?

  He decided to try. It seemed to be the only solution.

  The bar was iron; of that he was sure. He had seen the rust on it. Thinking back to his early, and skimpy, study of physics he tried to visualize the atomic structure of the element. The atomic weight, he remembered, was about fifty-five.

  He also remembered having seen a diagram of the probable molecular arrangement of iron. The problem was to use the energy waves at his disposal to cause the bar to dissolve or change into something else. He couldn’t release the stored-up energy of the atoms or the explosion would bring down the entire palace.

  Vainly he wished he knew the process which he’d seen Omega use so many times. The things he caused to vanish, did just that, probably dissipating their energy into the fourth dimension or something.

  Omega didn’t aid his mental processes in the least. Tiring of his flower girl act, he had decided to do something more sinister in nature. A gory fight between a pair of spiders and a cobra was the result of his effort. Mark shut his eyes and tried to concentrate.

  Finally he hit upon the solution of his problem. Since he couldn’t attempt to turn the iron into pure energy, for obvious reasons, and since he didn’t know enough to transmute it into something else, he’d try to melt it!

  He had the means, if he could direct the energy waves in the proper manner. Energy makes heat when applied in many ways. Friction is one way, but that wouldn’t do here. He had to create intense heat if he wanted to melt iron.

  Why not use the energy directly, causing the atoms to speed up their motion?

  MARK became so engrossed in the problem that he didn’t notice at all when the carcasses of the cobra and the two spiders vanished — the fight had ended in a draw — and were replaced by two colonies of ants, one black and one red, which immediately formed in battle array. Nor did he see the conflict which followed, led by miniature fife and drum corps on both sides.

  He was too busy concentrating and directing energy waves to do things which were new to him. A dozen times he tried before he finally hit upon the proper method of directing the waves. When he did, the bar on the outside of the door glowed, became incandescent and slowly dripped on the floor.

  He continued until he could no longer hear the drips; then he sighed and turned to Omega. That individual, he saw, had turned himself into a python, tied himself in a knot, and was vainly trying to untie himself. He gave up and returned to the guise of the aged man.

  “Very clever,” he applauded. “You’ve mastered something new. But why didn’t you do the obvious thing, and lift the bar from its sockets?”

  “I couldn’t,” Mark defended. “My arm isn’t long enough.”

  “Oh,” said, Omega, scratching his chin judiciously. “It was your arm then, which lifted that elevator?”

  Mark flushed.

  “I forgot,” he confessed. “I couldn’t see it, and it didn’t occur to me that the waves would act through the door. But anyway, I did something new. Now suppose you tell me some of the other ways I could use telekinesis to get out of here. You said there were several.”

  “Come over here,” said Omega, and placed one hand down near the crack under the wall.

  Mark did likewise and felt a draft. That meant that there was air beyond the wall, and not earth. Abruptly he slammed all the energy he could muster against it. The slab of granite was pushed outward, breaking in half as it fell with a crash. There was another dungeon on the other side. He jumped through and headed for the open door.

  AT HIGH speed he traversed the corridor outside, and ascended a flight of stairs. Omega, chuckling loudly, floated beside him. Two startled guards took potshots at them when they reached the top, but neither slowed in the slightest.

  Mark was traveling at express-train speed toward a window, which he crashed through without bothering to open. Outside, he soared high above the grove of trees on the palace grounds. The rush of the wind felt good after the dankness of the underground cell. Omega kept pace, once more humming the song of the flower girl.

  “Thanks, old smelt,” Mark said, when they were well out of shooting distance.

  “Don’t mention it,” said Omega, graciously. “Have you made up your mind yet?”

  “What about? Oh, you mean the matter of descendants?”

  “What else, dope?”

  “I wish you’d quit calling me a dope. First thing you know I’ll be believing it.”

  “The sooner the better. But that’s not answering my question.”

  “No. To tell you the truth, I’ve been so busy I haven’t thought about it at all.”

  Mark quaked inwardly as Omega appeared to be thinking it over. He was afraid his mentor would ask for an immediate decision, and thus force the issue. And he didn’t want to reveal his own plans until they were well under way.

  “Well” — Omega finally broke the silence — “don’t wait too long. The next time I drop in, I’d like to know what you’re going to do about it. So long.” Mark thought he heard a disembodied chuckled float eerily back to him after Omega vanished, but the sound was so faint that he couldn’t be sure.

  He sped toward headquarters. There were a thousand things to be done and he had only a week in which to do them. Vargo would have to be licked. Well, the radio idea was still good. There would have to be a few refinements...

  Chapter 23: Amateur Night

  ACTIVITY during the next few days was furious. Mark visited the factories where the electrical experts were employed. He had them introduce him to the chiefs of the various plants. Without warning he hypnotized each of these, and left them with certain post-hypnotic suggestions.

  Ira he trained for a part in his plan. Tolon also he coached. Gladys and Nona were given parts to perform. Everyone worked like a beaver to make himself letter-perfect in the parts to be played.

  Announcements were sent out, as a result of Mark’s hypnotism, by the various officials of the electrical companies. The wonders of radio transmission were explained. The announcement stated that every citizen of Detroit who applied to one of the companies would be given a ticket for a seat in one of the receiving auditoriums on the day of the initial broadcast.

  Glowing descriptions of the type of entertainment to be offered was included in the announcements. The many uses of radio were explained, not even skipping its military value. Mark included this last because he wanted every citizen to attend, and war was of paramount interest at the present. It also was meant to be a lure for Vargo.

  Vargo himself was sent a special invitation to broadcast personally. The presidents of the companies involved delivered the invitations themselves. They did so in accordance to Mark’s suggestion, and dwelt upon the advantage to a ruler of being able to speak to all of his subjects whenever he wished. They told him that the receivers were inexpensive and could be installed in every home. The military value of radio was also impressed upon him, though it appeared that Vargo was more interested in the first virtue of this new wonder.

  He a
ccepted, promising to prepare a speech for the occasion.

  When the fraternity was notified of his acceptance there was a certain amount of subdued rejoicing at headquarters. That was the first stumbling block in Mark’s plan, and it had been hurdled. He hoped that the rest of the plan would work out as smoothly.

  In the days of feverish preparation for the event, Mark became well acquainted with the people who were working with him. Jan Thomas, of course, could have no part in the proceedings. Nor could anyone who might be recognized by a member of Vargo’s retinue. Tolon was one of these.

  But both Tolon and Jan Thomas had work to do. For Mark had been watching both men, and had made up his mind about them. They were fine characters, however dissimilar.

  Jan Thomas was a true scientist, one of the kind that had made the twentieth century one of the most progressive eras in the history of man. He worked assiduously for the pleasure of working, and with no thought of personal gain. An accomplishment was payment in itself for the grueling hours which had made it possible.

  A fact learned or a fact proven, was worth all the gold in the world to Jan Thomas. In the days that followed the perfection of the serum, he hadn’t once intimated that he himself was a worthy recipient of its miraculous virtues. Mark was convinced that the thought had never entered his head.

  Tolon, an exact opposite of Thomas — young, virile, and filled with the joy of living — claimed Mark’s attention also. For that young man had virtues all his own. An adventurous, rollicking spirit, he nevertheless had an ingrained sense of fairness and consideration for the rights of others.

  Considering the nature of his recent employment, he was an exemplary citizen. In spite of his grand contempt for the authority of Vargo, and the fact that he made his living as a thief, that was still true. For he believed in the equality of man and was willing to chance anything to bring about the freeing of the minds of the people of Detroit. Even in his thefts he had invariably picked victims who appeared prosperous enough to stand a slight loss.