Wild Talent

by Wilson Tucker

  “All right,” she laughed at him lightly, “I forgive you this one time.”

  (You scan me too easily. Not fair! I can’t do that to you.) Paul stopped eating to stare hard. “Say! Why wasn’t I aware of you waiting on the other side of the door?” He almost hurled the puzzled thought across the table at her. “You said you saw me standing there, fumbling” She made a face at him: “Because I have something you do not, Paul, just as you have certain talents I don’t possess. I said there were small differences between us”

  “What?” he demanded.

  “I have no ability whatever with telekinesis; I can’t disconnect the microphones as you did. And I lack the parabolic receptivity that you seem to possess. I didn’t discover the microphones and the men listening.” And then she thought to add, “Tm unable to scan the separate rooms in the house, but I can follow your percipience as you do.”

  “But what do you have that I don’t?”

  “A mental barrier, a kind of shield to prevent your looking in on me.”

  “You can do that?” he asked with astonishment.

  Martha nodded. “Try me—now.”

  Paul tried. Peer and pry as he did, searching over the surface of her mind for a crack or crevice however small that a thought might slip through, he found nothing.

  Her cerebration was opaque. She was wrapped in complete silence. Little wonder that he had been unable to locate a woman who had screamed in the night!

  He said aloud in wonder, “How do you do that?”

  “I’ll be happy to teach you, in return for what you can teach me.” She put out a hand. “A bargain?”

  He reached for the waiting hand. “A bargain!”

  The gentleman patiently listening at the earphones must have wondered what was going on, catching as he did only the spoken parts of the conversation.

  The initial group of intelligence agents arrived, and Paul began the training work assigned to him. The big

  house which had held comparatively few people when he first moved in now seemed full to overflowing, but he quickly discovered that not all the arriving strangers were field men sent in for training. There was a sprinkling of internal security agents, watching the students; and of course there were additional staff members to feed and house the influx. The wheels within wheels were everywhere; Paul found a cook and a chauffeur who were intelligence men, and an upstairs maid who not only checked on Martha but the other domestics in the household. One of the girls in the stenographer’s pool kept a wary eye on the female clerical help and on the switchboard women. And with each of them it was the same baffling paradox: they were to watch for they knew not what, but they were to watch for it.

  It reminded him of an anecdote that made the rounds after the war. The censors attached to Los Alamos and the other units of the Manhattan District kept strict watch on the scientists under them, watching for a leak by word or letter. They didn’t know what kind of leak to watch for, and had not the slightest idea what was in the making, but like patient dogs they kept watch. And finally caught a man. In a note to a friend, the man had described a method of prolonging the life of a flashlight battery.

  In time, Paul found himself securely attached to and constantly aware of a group of a half dozen men; he came to know them internally and externally as well as he had known Palmer of the F.B.I., as well as Carnell. He could follow them with ease day or night, awake or sleeping, and when they were sent to Washington and on to Miami for unwitting distance tests he was there beside them mentally. All unknowing, they passed the tests and were ready. Paul notified the man in charge of the Maryland center, a Lieutenant General Boggs, and the six agents were dispatched. Training immediately began with a new group.

  Lieutenant General Boggs became the twelfth man to be made aware of Paul’s secret—at least as far as Slater was concerned. Slater knew nothing of Karen’s knowledge, of Martha Merrill and her family of four. Paul privately admitted that the affair was beginning to take on the aspect of a circus. But Boggs found himself the official twelfth and he didn’t like it; he regarded Paul with nothing but suspicion and distrust. Although he maintained the duty desired of him, he kept a barrier between himself and that freak, Paul Breen.

  With the dispatch of those first agents overseas, the training program began to pay small dividends. Sooner than information would have trickled back through normal channels, Paul learned a few of the things going on in East Germany—and Washington promptly lodged a protest demanding the dissolution of the East German police militia created by Russia, claiming it to be really the nucleus of a German Army. The White House and the State Department were informed well in advance of the outcome of certain elections and the return from exile of King Leopold III of Belgium. In late July came the news of Russia’s intention of returning their representative to the U.N. Security Council, and so of course his actual return caused no surprise.

  More men were trained and then sent away. Not all were assigned to overseas posts. Slater had ideas.

  A former government official suddenly admitted he had been a Communist and named three others like himself. The mayor of a large city resigned almost unexpectedly and was given a foreign post. A new friendliness developed toward Spain and several concessions were made to that nation. In October, the President flew to Wake Island to confer with General Mac Arthur on Far East Policy—and a Breen-Slater agent went along as a member of the plane crew.

  “How goes it?” Martha asked.

  “Like eating pie. Do you see what he’s up to?”

  “Slater? Yes. He’s spinning a web all his own.”

  “Is your brother in London? Dave?”

  “Not at the moment, but he will be soon.”

  “Ask him to go to Ireland, when he can. Look up a man named Willis, Walter Willis. I’m convinced he is someone we should know.”

  “Willis? I know that name.”

  “You do! How?”

  “It has come up at the office. That is, in the mind, not in conversation. Willis is one of Slater’s agents. He receives information from him and sends to him.”

  “Sends to him? You’re sure?”

  “Yes, Paul.”

  “Is that all you know of Willis?”

  “That’s all. He’s one name in a hundred or more that I’ve chanced across a time or two. Why, Paul? Is he connected with this web of Slater’s?”

  “I think so. I’ve been watching for something ever since I caught Slater attempting to hide the name from me.” He reflected a moment. “I suppose that’s why you haven’t learned the answer before this. Slater didn’t suspect you and so hid nothing from you. Having nothing to hide from you, he had no betraying thoughts of Willis around you. So you accepted the casual references as just another agent.”

  “I’m sorry, Paul. I should have peered more closely.”

  “No fault of yours. There was nothing there to arouse your suspicions as there was in my case. Perhaps your brother can find something in Ireland. And caution him—Willis is dangerous.”

  “I’ll tell him. Be good, Paul. And come home as soon as you can. I haven’t seen you all day.”

  He flashed a grin. “If the elevator isn’t running I’ll climb the stairs. What’s for dinner?”

  “What would you like?”

  “I’ll start with a kiss. Beat the door.”

  “Now, Mr. Breen,” the instructor said, “suppose you key a word and the class will build a cipher.”

  The number of men who reported to the training center surprised Paul. It was quite apparent that Slater had quickly enlarged upon his original idea, once the initial successes became known. The trainees continued to come in, in small but continual streams until by the year’s end, Paul had lost count of their actual number. He estimated it at near fifty. He suspected that Slater was actively recruiting new men all the time, sending them directly to the old mansion or using them as domestic replacements for the more experienced agents already in service. They would appear in batches of six, but as soon as ea
ch half dozen were sent to some distant city for a final telepathic test, they were shipped overseas and new trainees took their places. He managed to keep in contact with them all, but now it was no longer a constant, uninterrupted contact as it had been with Peter Conklin; instead he found himself handling so many men by the year’s end that he was forced into an intermittent union with each—grazing first one and then the other, pausing for a close inspection only at those times when the agent seemed to have something important under observation.

  Paul called a temporary halt to the proceedings by faking a relapse, a second period of illness in which nothing was heard or reported. The doctor was rushed in to examine the old scar on the back of his neck, but nothing could be learned from that. Paul complained to General Boggs that the work was too much and too heavy, he had been losing contact with some of the men for days before the illness struck. The intermission of silence, lasting for over a week, frightened Boggs and, by association, Slater. For more than a week they lived in daily fear of their beautifully constructed espionage net crumbling beneath their fingers. Slater, nearly frantic, consulted Dr. Roy to learn no more from him than had been learned from the doctor who continued to stop in twice daily to inspect the pulse and the old scar. With spiteful vengeance, Roy pointed out that he knew less of Paul Breen than any of them, thanks to the policy of keeping them apart. So why ask him for advice now?

  Paul and Martha enjoyed the furor.

  On New Year’s Eve, an agent died in Vladivostok. The man had been one of a group trained at the center the previous summer and Paul’s perception of him had not been continuous, but his death seemed to signal a mass movement. On New Year’s Day, the Chinese Communists opened a terrific drive in Korea and barreled down the peninsula. Almost at the same time Canada started work on still another atomic pile. Paul reported both developments before the newspapers or governmental reports. A conference of British Commonwealth Prime Ministers opened in London, and for some reason Slater evinced an interest in that. He left Washington in late January to witness the latest bomb tests in Nevada, but behind him the various events were watched and recorded.

  General MacArthur decided, in the opening days of February, that the Chinese entry into the new war upset all the preconceived ideas of quick victory; in Maryland, General Boggs notified interested parties of the decision and smugly predicted that a public announcement would be forthcoming soon. He was proven right two weeks later. And another French cabinet fell, almost on schedule.

  An agent in Iran discovered and reported rumors of a plot to assassinate a premier who opposed the nationalization of oil; a secret warning was flashed to the official from Washington, but it did not prevent the assassination. General Eisenhower assumed the effective command of all Atlantic Treaty forces in Europe, and one of Slater s men stalked about his headquarters with eyes and ears opened wide. Only a few miles away, the president decided to relieve MacArthur of his Far East command, and Slater told his few close friends of the development several days before the public announcement was made.

  “Paul?”

  “Yes?”

  “Dave is in Ireland again. He is inclined to agree with you about that man. Some sort of undercover agent.”

  “Yes, Conklin found out that much. A few have heard of him, but nobody wants to talk about him”

  “You think he is in with Slater?”

  “That seems to be the connection; Slater exhibited a definite guilt when hiding his name from me. And have you noticed something? None of these men shipped out of here have been assigned to Ireland. Every place in the world but Ireland.”

  Summer came again, and Martha and Paul spent as much time out of doors as possible; they dawdled for an hour or two each day in the swimming pool—alone. By some curious and unwritten law, no other member of the household cared to use the pool while they were in it, although there was always a maid lurking somewhere near by who would rush out with towels as they climbed from the water. Or they went for long, slow walks around the farthest reaches of the walled-in estate, again alone, but only after Paul had bluntly invited a bodyguard not to accompany them.

  “I seem to detect a measure of distrust,” Martha said after they were out of earshot. She laughed.

  “And doubt,” Paul added. “He’s wondering if he should tag along anyway. Our slightest wish is their command, except where our wishes conflict with their wishes.”

  “This is like a prison, even to the wall. I wonder what is on the other side of the wall?”

  “I don’t want to point, but a pair of sentries are standing over there in the woods about opposite us. They heard you laughing a moment ago—and exchanged sneers.”

  “I can’t . . .” She hesitated, groping for the men, and then found them. “Oh, yes, I see them now. Please notice my improvement, teacher. And do you know what I did last night? I disconnected the microphone in my bathroom.”

  “Be careful,” Paul was quick to warn her. “Don’t ever let them suspect you are what you are. That would be fatal.”

  “But, Paul, my bathroom! And I will be careful.” She reflected for a moment. “Those sentries—I can’t read them very well. You said they were sneering?”

  “Their grapevine has been working overtime, mostly in the wrong direction. A good-sized body of men are encamped out there and you’d be surprised at some of their notions; they don’t actually know who or what is inside the wall, but they’ve seen men and women coming in. Rumor has made an evil woman of you, Martha.”

  She laughed again, but without sound. “Then they aren’t sneering, Paul. They are envious.”

  He nodded. “That too.” As they walked on he found a man perched in a distant tree. “See him?” he asked.

  She stared hard, looking for the particular tree etched in his mind. “No. Where?”

  “I’ll make him move. Watch for a movement.”

  The concealed marksman fumbled, nearly dropped his rifle and shot out a quick hand to recapture it.

  “Yes! I saw that. And there are more of them.”

  “Yes; all around us. They can see you and the other women and start the rumors. Word of mouth does the rest.” Paul grinned suddenly. “Our boy is looking at your legs right now. But for that matter, so are a half dozen others back at the house.” She was wearing shorts.

  “Everyone does,” she protested, “except you. I never see you looking at them.”

  He responded with a laugh and then carefully selected one image from a storehouse of recent memories. He held the image at the front of his mind until she blushed.

  “Stop it, Paul! That isn’t fair.”

  “But I’ve made my point.”

  They walked on, moving down the hill as the land fell away from the woods and dipped toward the distant buildings. The sun was hot overhead and after a while Paul removed his shirt.

  “Were you listening to that navy report the other day?” he asked her. “The one that said a Douglas Skyrocket had flown higher and faster than any other plane?”

  “I seem to remember something about it. Why?”

  “The navy’s holding back. That particular flight was made several weeks ago; there’ve been one or two more since then. Do you know what they’re preparing to do?”

  “No.” Martha looked up at him. “But I can guess you are wishing you were doing it.”

  “They’re planning a round-the-world flight in that ship.

  With a minimum number of stops. Right now they’re setting up refueling bases and they hope to send that ship completely around the world pretty soon—the ultimate goal is nonstop around the world, either jet or rocket. Maybe a combination of the two. I think they’ll make it.” She nodded, following his reasoning. “Fast.”

  “Very fast. A matter of hours.” He thought to add, “And watch that new business at White Sands. I can’t get too much information there, but I suspect they’re building a moon rocket and expect to fill it with test animals. The army is far ahead of the navy in rocket programs.”

 
; “A lot of people will be terribly surprised if it is green cheese,” she suggested.

  Paul agreed. “But think what might happen if that first rocket carries rats and mice. “What will lovers and songwriters do then?” In a suddenly serious mood he added, “You’re right though about my wishing for that round-the-world flight. I want to be almost anyplace but here.” He reached out to seize her hand possessively. “What’s your island like—your home?”

  “Absolutely beautiful! My mind is open. Look.”

  A blue, a very blue lagoon lifted bodily from a Technicolored picture book and set down in an already blue Caribbean Sea forty miles from anywhere; beyond that a silvery beach of sand so white and fine it hurt the eyes to gaze at it under the noonday sun, and still beyond that was the nearest approach to paradise on earth a retired servant of the Crown might ever hope to see. A small island among other similar dots in the region—no more than a few square miles and therefore worthless from a commercial or tourist standpoint; the island was far to the south of the hurricane belt, but squarely in the path of the trade winds, and its climate was perpetual summer. Their home stood back from the beach in a storied setting of palms; there was a large garden, some cattle and sheep. The island did not have a single paved road, no building more than a story high, no gas mains, no running water other than a well with a pump, and no electricity except that generated by each family for their own use. The only other inhabitants of the island were descendants of slaves, Africans who were fishermen, sailors or boatbuilders.

  St. George’s, Grenada, was forty miles away by native schooner; the city had everything you might expect of any small city except that the goods tended to be British or domestic products rather than American. They went to the city perhaps once or twice a month for supplies, but other than that the family lived gratefully alone in a semiwild Eden of their own choosing. “Does all this sound too primitive?”

  “So primitive,” he responded instantly, “that I’d trade everything I have for it!” He glanced at her and a qualifying thought occurred to him. “Well, almost everything”