by Anthology
"Not guess," Sir Lewis said. "You know. Prescience, Malone. Your precognitive faculty."
"All right," Malone said. "All right. So what?"
"Take it easy," Burris put in. "Relax, Malone. Everything's going to be all right."
Sir Lewis waved a hand negligently. "Let's continue," he said. "Tell me, Malone: if you were a mathematics professor, teaching a course in calculus, how would you grade a paper that had all the answers but didn't show the work?"
"I never took calculus," Malone said. "But I imagine I'd flunk him."
"Why?" Sir Lewis said.
"Because if he can't back up his answer," Malone said slowly, "then it's no better than a layman's guess. He has to give reasons for his answers; otherwise nobody else can understand him."
"Fine," Sir Lewis said. "Perfectly fine. Now--" he puffed at his pipe--"can you give me a logical reason for arriving at the decision you made a few hours ago?"
The danger was coming closer, Malone realized. He didn't know what it was or how to guard himself against it. All he could do was answer, and play for time.
"While I was driving up here," he said, "I sent you a message. I told you what I knew and what I believed about the whole world picture as it stands now. I don't know if you received it, but I--"
Luba spoke without the trace of a smile. "You mean you didn't know?" she said. "You didn't know I was answering you?"
That was the first pebble of the avalanche, Malone knew suddenly--the avalanche that was somehow going to destroy him. "You forced your thoughts into my mind, then," he said as coolly as he could. "Just as you forced decision on the rest of society."
"Now, dammit, Malone!" Burris said suddenly. "You know those bursts take a lot of energy, and only last for a fraction of a second!"
Malone blinked. "Then you ... didn't--"
Of course I didn't force anything on you, Kenneth. I can't. Not all the power of the entire PRS could force anything through your shield. But you opened it to me.
It was Luba's mental "voice." Malone opened his mouth, shut it and then, belatedly, snapped shut the channel through which he'd contacted her. Luba gave him a wry look, but said nothing. "You mean I'm a telepath?" Malone asked weakly.
"Certainly," Sir Lewis snapped. "At the moment, you can only pick up Luba--but you are certainly capable of picking up anyone, eventually. Just as you learned to teleport, you can learn to be a telepath. You--"
The room was whirling, but Malone tried to keep his mind steady. "Wait a minute," he said. "If you received what I sent, then you know I've got a question to ask."
There was a little silence.
Finally Sir Lewis looked up. "You want to know why you felt we--the PRS--were innocent of the crimes you want to charge us with. Very well." He paused. "We have wrecked civilization: granted. We could have done it more smoothly: granted."
"Then--"
Sir Lewis' face was serious and steady. Malone tensed.
"Malone," Sir Lewis said, "do you think you're the only one with a mental shield?"
Malone shook his head. "I guess stress--fixity of mind or purpose--could develop it in anyone," he said. "At least, in some people."
"Very well," Sir Lewis said. "Now, among the various people of the world who have, through one necessity or another, managed to develop such shields--"
Burris broke in impatiently. His words rang, and then echoed in the old house.
"Some fool," he said flatly, "was going to start the Last War."
* * * * *
"So you had to stop it," Malone said after a long second. "But I still don't see--"
"Of course you don't," Sir Lewis said. "But you've got to understand why you don't see it first."
"Because I'm stupid," Malone said.
Luba was shaking her head. Malone turned to face her. "Not stupid," she said. "But some people, Kenneth, have certain talents. Others have--other talents. There's no way of equating these talents; all are useful, each performs a different function."
"And my talent," Malone said, "is stupidity. But--"
She lit a cigarette daintily. "Not at all," she said. "You've done a really tremendous job, Kenneth. I was trained ever since I was a baby to use my psionic abilities--the PRS has known how to train children in that line ever since 1970. Only Mike Fueyo developed a system for instruction independently; the boy was, and is, a genius, as you've noticed."
"Agreed," Malone said. "But--"
"You, however," Luba said, "have the distinction of being the first human being who has, as an adult, achieved his full powers without childhood training. In addition, you're the only human being who has ever developed to the extent you have--in precognition, too."
She puffed on the cigarette. Malone waited.
"But what you don't have," she said at last, very carefully, "is the ability to reason out the steps you've taken, after you've reached the proper conclusion."
"Like the calculus student," Malone said. "I flunk." Something inside him grated over the marrow in his bones. It was as though someone had decided that the best cure for worry was coarse emery in the joints, and he, Kenneth J. Malone, had been picked for the first experiment.
"You're not flunking," Luba said. "You're a very long way from flunking, Kenneth."
Burris cleared his throat suddenly. Malone turned to him. The Head of the FBI stuck an unlighted cigar into his mouth, chewed it a little, and then said: "Malone, we've been keeping tabs on you. Your shield was unbreakable--but we have been able to reach the minds of people you've talked to: Mike Sands, Primo Palveri, and so on. And Her Majesty, of course: you opened up a gap in your shield to talk to her, and you haven't closed it down. Until you started broadcasting here on the way up, naturally."
"All right," Malone said, waiting with as much patience as possible for the point.
"I tried to take you off the case," Burris went on, "because Sir Lewis and the others felt you were getting too close to the truth. Which you were, Malone, which you were." He lit his cigar and looked obscurely pleased. "But they didn't know how you'd take it," he said. "They ... we ... felt that a man who hadn't been trained since childhood to accept the extrasensory abilities of the human mind couldn't possibly learn to accept the reality of the job the PRS has to do."
"I still don't," Malone said. "I'm stupid. I flunk. Remember?"
"Now, now," Burris said helplessly. "Not at all, Malone. But we were worried. I lied to you about those three spies--I put the drug in the water-cooler. I tried to keep you from learning the Fueyo method of teleportation. I didn't want you to learn that you were telepathic."
"But I did," Malone said, "And what does that make me?"
"That," Sir Lewis cut in, "is what we're attempting to find out."
Malone felt suitably crushed, but he wasn't sure by what. "I've got some questions," he said after a second. "I want to know three things."
"Go ahead," Sir Lewis said.
"One:" Malone said, "How come Her Majesty and the other nutty telepaths didn't spot you? Two: How come you sent me out on these jobs when you were afraid I was dangerous? And three: What was it that was so safe about busting up civilization? How did that save us from the Last War?"
Sir Lewis nodded. "First," he said, "we've developed a technique of throwing up a shield and screening it with a surface of innocuous thoughts--like hiding behind a movie screen. Second ... well, we had to get the jobs done, Malone. And Andrew thought you were the most capable, dangerous or not. For one thing, we wanted to get all the insane telepaths in one place; it's difficult to work when the atmosphere's full of such telepathic ravings."
"But wrecking the world because of a man with a mind-shield--why not just work things so his underlings wouldn't obey him?" Malone shook his head. "That sounds more reasonable."
"It may," Sir Lewis said. "But it wouldn't work. As a matter of fact, it was tried, and it didn't work. You see, the Sino-Soviet top men were smart enough to see that their underlings were being tampered with. And they've developed a system, pa
rtly depending on automatic firing systems, partly on individuals with mind-blocks--that is, people who aren't being tampered with--which we can't disrupt directly. So we had to smash them."
"And the United States at the same time," Burris said. "The economic balance had to be kept; a strong America would be forced in to fill the power vacuum otherwise, and that would make for an even worse catastrophe. And if we weren't in trouble, the Sino-Soviet Bloc would blame their mess on us. And that would start the Last War before collapse could get started. Right, Malone?"
"I see," Malone said, thinking that he almost did. He told himself he could feel happy now; the danger--which hadn't been danger to him, really, but danger from him toward the PRS, toward civilization--was over. But he didn't feel happy. He didn't feel anything.
"There's a crisis building in New York," Sir Lewis said suddenly, "that's going to take all our attention. Malone, why don't you ... well, go home and get some rest? We're going to be busy for a while, and you'll want to be fresh for the work coming up."
"Sure," Malone said listlessly. "Sure."
As the others rose, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he vanished.
XVII
Two hours passed, somehow. Bourbon and soda helped them pass, Malone discovered; he drank two high-balls slowly, trying not to think about anything. He felt terrible. After a while he made himself a third high-ball and started on it. Maybe this would make him feel better. Maybe he thought, he ought to break out his cigars and celebrate.
But there didn't seem to be very much to celebrate somehow. He felt like an amoeba on a slide being congratulated on having successfully conquered the world.
He drank some more bourbon-and-soda. Amoebae, he told himself, didn't drink bourbon-and-soda. He was better off than an amoeba. He was happier than an amoeba. But somehow he couldn't imagine any amoeba in the world, no matter how heart-broken, feeling any worse than Kenneth J. Malone.
He looked up. There was another amoeba in the room.
Then he frowned. She wasn't an amoeba, he thought. She was the scientist the amoeba was supposed to fall in love with, so the scientist could report on everything he did, so all the other scien--psiontists could know all about him. But whoever heard of a scien--psiontist--falling in love with an amoeba? Nobody. It was fate. And fate was awful. Malone had often suspected it, but now he was sure. Now he was looking at things from the amoeba's side, and fate was terrible.
"No, Ken," the psiontist said. "It needn't be at all like that."
"Oh, yes, it need," Malone said positively. "It need be even worse. When I have some more to drink, it'll be even worse. Wait and see."
"Ken," Luba said softly, "you don't have to suffer this way."
"No," Malone said agreeably, "I don't. You could shoot me and then I'd be dead. Just quit all this amoebing around, O.K.?"
"You're already half shot," Luba said sharply. "Now be quiet and listen. You're angry because you've fallen in love with me and you're all choked up over the futility of it all."
"Exactly," Malone said. "Ex-positively-actly. You're a psionic super-man--woman. You can figure things out in your own little head instead of just getting along on dum psionic luck like us amoebae. You're too far above me."
"Ken, listen!" Luba snapped. "Look into my mind. You can link up with me: go ahead and do it. You can read me clear down to the subconscious if you want to."
Malone blinked.
"Now, Ken!" Luba said.
Malone looked. For a long time.
* * * * *
Half an hour later, Kenneth J. Malone, alone in his room, was humming happily to himself as he brushed a few specks of dust from the top of his best royal blue bowler. He faced the mirror on the wall, puffed on the cigar clenched between his teeth, and adjusted the bowler to just the right angle.
There was a knock on the door. He went and opened it, carefully disposing of the cigar first. "Oh," he said. "What are you doing here?"
"Just saying hello," Thomas Boyd grinned. "Back at work?"
Boyd didn't know, of course, what had happened. Nor need he ever know. "Just about," Malone said. "Spending the evening relaxing, though."
"Hm-m-m," Boyd said. "Let me guess. Her name begins with L?"
"It does not," Malone said flatly.
"But--" Boyd began.
Malone cast about in his mind for an explanation. Telling Boyd the truth--that Luba and Kenneth J. Malone just weren't equals as far as social intercourse went--would leave him exactly nowhere. But, somehow, it had to be said. "Tom," he said, "suppose you met a beautiful girl--charming, wonderful, brilliant."
"Great," Boyd said. "I like it already."
"Suppose she looked about ... oh ... twenty-three," Malone went on.
"Do any more supposing," Boyd said, "and I'll be pawing the ground."
"And then," Malone said, very carefully, "suppose you found out, after you'd been out with her ... well, when you took her out, say, you met your grandmother."
"My grandmother," Boyd said virtuously, "doesn't go to joints like that."
"Use your imagination," Malone snapped. "And suppose your grandmother recognized the girl as an old schoolmate of hers."
Boyd swallowed hard. "As a what?"
"An old schoolmate," Malone said. "Suppose this girl were so charming and everything just because she'd had ... oh, ninety years or so to practice in."
"Malone," Boyd said in a depressed tone, "you can spoil more ideas--"
"Well," Malone said, "would you go out with her again?"
"You kidding?" Boyd said. "Of course not."
"But she's the same girl," Malone said. "You've just found out something new about her, that's all."
Boyd nodded. "So," he said, "you found out something new about Luba. Like, maybe, she's ninety years old?"
"No," Malone said. "Nothing like that. Just--something." He remembered Queen Elizabeth's theory of politeness toward superiors: people, she'd said, act as if they believed their bosses were superior to them, but they didn't believe it.
On the other hand, he thought, when a man knows and believes that someone actually is superior--then, he doesn't mind at all. He can depend on that superiority to help him. And love, ordinary man-and-woman love, just can't exist.
Nor, Malone told himself, would anyone want it to. It would, after all, be damned uncomfortable.
"So who's the girl?" Boyd said. "And where? The clubs are all closed, and the streets probably aren't very safe just now."
"Barbara Wilson," Malone said, "and Yucca Flats. I ought to be able to get a fast plane." He shrugged. "Or maybe teleport," he added.
"Sure," Boyd said. "But on a night with so many troubles--"
"Oh, King Henry," Malone said, "hearken. A man who looks as historical as you do ought to know a little history."
"Such as?" Boyd said, bristling slightly.
"There have always been troubles," Malone said. "In the Eighth Century, it was Saracens; in the Fourteenth, the Black Death. Then there was the Reformation, and the Prussians in 1870, and the Spanish in 1898, and--"
"And?" Boyd said.
Malone took a deep breath. He could almost feel the court dress flowing over him, as the court manners did. Lady Barbara, after all, attendant to Her Majesty, would expect a certain character from him.
After a second, he had it.
"In 1914, it was enemy aliens," said Sir Kenneth Malone.
* * *
Contents
THE MOON POOL
By A. Merritt
Foreword
The publication of the following narrative of Dr. Walter T. Goodwin has been authorized by the Executive Council of the International Association of Science.
First:
To end officially what is beginning to be called the Throckmartin Mystery and to kill the innuendo and scandalous suspicions which have threatened to stain the reputations of Dr. David Throckmartin, his youthful wife, and equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton ever since a tardy despatch from M
elbourne, Australia, reported the disappearance of the first from a ship sailing to that port, and the subsequent reports of the disappearance of his wife and associate from the camp of their expedition in the Caroline Islands.
Second:
Because the Executive Council have concluded that Dr. Goodwin's experiences in his wholly heroic effort to save the three, and the lessons and warnings within those experiences, are too important to humanity as a whole to be hidden away in scientific papers understandable only to the technically educated; or to be presented through the newspaper press in the abridged and fragmentary form which the space limitations of that vehicle make necessary.
For these reasons the Executive Council commissioned Mr. A. Merritt to transcribe into form to be readily understood by the layman the stenographic notes of Dr. Goodwin's own report to the Council, supplemented by further oral reminiscences and comments by Dr. Goodwin; this transcription, edited and censored by the Executive Council of the Association, forms the contents of this book.
Himself a member of the Council, Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, Ph.D., F.R.G.S. etc., is without cavil the foremost of American botanists, an observer of international reputation and the author of several epochal treaties upon his chosen branch of science. His story, amazing in the best sense of that word as it may be, is fully supported by proofs brought forward by him and accepted by the organization of which I have the honor to be president. What matter has been elided from this popular presentation--because of the excessively menacing potentialities it contains, which unrestricted dissemination might develop--will be dealt with in purely scientific pamphlets of carefully guarded circulation.
THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCIENCE
Per J. B. K., President
CHAPTER I
The Thing on the Moon Path
For two months I had been on the d'Entrecasteaux Islands gathering data for the concluding chapters of my book upon the flora of the volcanic islands of the South Pacific. The day before I had reached Port Moresby and had seen my specimens safely stored on board the Southern Queen. As I sat on the upper deck I thought, with homesick mind, of the long leagues between me and Melbourne, and the longer ones between Melbourne and New York.