But there was no sign that the oily-haired person saw or heard or felt what Soames did. Perhaps because he was not wearing the belt, but only had it crumpled together in his pocket.
“Right!” said Soames harshly. “I’ll get it back!”
He plunged toward the studio door. There had been Secret Service men assigned to guard the children. Soames caught one of them by the shoulder.
“The kids have been robbed,” he snapped in the Secret Service man’s ear. “Secret device! We’ve got to get it back! I can do it! Come along!”
The Secret Service man instantly followed him. And Soames tore through the scared people still aimlessly wandering about. He plunged down the stairs. A squad-car cop moved to check his rush, and the Secret Service man panted an identification and a need. The cop abandoned all other matters and followed, too.
Soames needed to close his eyes to see what the Topper saw. He blinked them shut while he ran three paces. The Topper walked, now. He’d been joined by two friends. Soames heard his voice, he even felt the motions of his lips and tongue in speech. He boasted that he’d snatched the beads off Linda Beach’s neck, and got a fancy belt one of those funny-dressed kids was wearing.
Half a block. Two more of the Toppers joined the bragging snatcher. They also heard of his grand achievement. The Topper drew his loot partly from his pocket to prove his boast. They looked, and swaggered, and whooped to others of their fellowship.
Soames pelted around a corner, turning it without warning. The Secret Service man and the cop lost a dozen paces. Soames raced ahead. There was a cluster of late-teen-age boys on the sidewalk of Eighth Avenue. They wanted to see the loot.
Soames plunged into them. Without a word, he tackled and bore to the ground the one in whose pocket Hod’s belt and Linda Beach’s necklace still reposed.
Their reaction was instant. The Toppers were in a close group. Soames hit it and fell to the ground atop one of their number. The others instantly attacked him as if by reflex action. They stamped and kicked viciously.
But there was a cop and a Secret Service man on the way. They struck. The Toppers turned to fight and fled instead at the sight of two adults already administering punishment to those within reach and coming on to reach others.
The two officers pulled Soames to his feet. In seconds he’d been badly battered. He pulled Hod’s belt out from the pocket of the snarling, now-pallid member of the Toppers, who was half-strangled and shaken. He got the necklace. Numbly, he felt again and found a stray stone or two.
“All right,” he said thickly. “I got it. I’ll get back to the kids with it.”
The cop took the Topper. Soames and the Secret Service man got back to the studio. The show was still on. Soames exhaustedly handed Hod his belt, and stripped off the other belt that Fran had put on him. He gave it back to Fran. Fran’s eyes still burned, but he regarded Soames with definite respect. Perhaps there was even liking. And Soames held up the recovered necklace for Linda Beach to see, though she was then still before the camera.
She was a seasoned performer. Without blinking an eye she changed what she was saying, called on Gail to have the children demonstrate the devices they’d brought from the wrecked ship, and came to Soames. She counted the stones swiftly, and asked questions.
He told her. It would come out, necessarily. The children had, built into their belts, devices which produced an effect on the order of telepathy. But it was not telepathy. Undoubtedly the devices could be turned on or off. Turned on, they linked together the senses of those who wore them, not the minds, but the senses. Each saw what the others saw, and heard what the others heard, and felt with the rest. But thoughts were not shared. Such a device would not be confusing if one were used to it, and two men working together could co-operate with a thousand times the effectiveness of men without them. Children playing together could have a degree of companionship otherwise impossible. And four children upon a desperate voyage, without adults to reassure them, would need this close linkage with their fellows. It would give them courage. They could be more resolute.
Linda Beach went back to camera-position and waited until the demonstration of the pocket metal-cutting device, by Fran, was ended. Then she signalled for her own camera and definitely put on the charm. She showed the necklace. She said it had been stolen. She said that the children were telepaths, and by the reading of the criminal’s mind he had been tracked down through the crowded streets outside the studio, and her necklace recovered.
It is always better to say something that is not quite the truth but is perfectly understandable than something which is true but bewildering. This is a cardinal rule in television. Never bewilder your audience! So Linda Beach did not bewilder her audience by accurate statement. She told them something they would understand. It made the children convincingly more than merely ordinary children.
It shocked her world-wide audience out of that bemused condition the professionalism of the broadcast had produced. It lifted them out of their seats, those who were seated. It tended to lift the hair of the rest, those who realized that monsters from space who could read human minds were utterly invincible and infinitely to be dreaded. No matter what the children looked like, now, they had been declared on an official fact-revealing broadcast to be extraterrestrial monsters who could read human minds!
It raised hell.
Once said, it could not be withdrawn. It could be denied, but it would be believed. In higher echelons of government all over the world it produced such raging hatred of the children and the United States together as made all previous tensions seem love-feasts by comparison. In Russia it was instantly and bitterly believed that all Soviet military secrets were now in process of being plucked from Russian brains and given to the American military. Rage came from helplessness in the face of such an achievement. There could be no way to stop such espionage, and military action would be hopeless if the Americans knew all about it before it was tried. In more tranquil nations there was deep uneasiness, and in some there was terror. And everywhere that men hated or stole or schemed—which was everywhere—the belief that everybody’s secrets were open to the children filled men with rage.
Of all public-relations enterprises in human history, the world-wide broadcast about the children was most disastrous.
Soames and Gail could realize the absurdity of the thing, without any hope of stopping or correcting it.
* * * *
They went swiftly back to the hidden base in the Rockies. Soames stayed to have certain minor injuries attended to. Also he needed to get in touch with the two physicists who had seen the children and known despair, but who now played at being castaways with gratifying results. In part he was needed for endless, harassing consultations with people who wanted urgently to disbelieve everything he said, and managed to hold on to a great deal of doubt.
Meanwhile there came about a sullen and infuriated lessening of international tension. No nation would dare plan a sneak attack on America if it could be known in advance. And nobody dared make threats if the United States could know exactly how much of the threat was genuine.
Captain Moggs flew busily back and forth between the east and the hidden missile base to which the children had been returned. She informed Soames that the decorated belts had been taken away from the children. One of them had been opened up and the round and square medallions on it examined. One decoration was undoubtedly the case for the sensory-linkage apparatus. There was a way to turn it on and off. It contained a couple of eccentrically shaped bits of metal. That was all. Duplicated, the duplicates did nothing whatever. The other medallions seemed to contain apparatus for purposes yet unguessed-at. One actually had a minute moving part in it. But what it did was past imagining.
Captain Moggs said authoritatively:
“It will take time but we’ll find out what it does. Of course right now all research is concentrated on the telepathic device. It will be developed and before long we will be thoroughly informed about the weapo
ns and the councils of other nations. It will be magnificent! We’ll no longer have reason to be apprehensive of attack, and we can evaluate every military situation with absolute precision!”
“Dammit!” snapped Soames. “The gadgets aren’t telepathic! They don’t transmit thoughts! They only exchange sensory information! And there’s no danger of the children finding out anything by telepathy when they can only share the sensations of someone wearing a special device! What would they do with military information if they had it?”
Captain Moggs looked mysterious. She departed, and Soames again cursed bitterly the situation he’d happened to create. But still he did not see how he could have done otherwise than to destroy the children’s high-power signalling device when they would have used it back on Antarctica. Yet he was not happy about the consequences of his act.
* * * *
He found time to get in touch with the physicists who’d come out to the Rocky Mountain base. They’d found a few others who could put themselves into the mental state of castaways who knew that a given device could be made, and then tried to make something which wasn’t it but had some of its properties. In a way it was deliberate self-deception, but it was deliberate to circumvent a natural habit of the educated mind. A trained man almost invariably tries to see what can be done with what he has and knows, instead of imagining what he wants and then trying to make something more or less like it, even if he has to look for the knowledge he will need. It took a particular type of mind to use Soames’ trick. It was necessary, for example, to imagine limitations to the operation of a desired device, or one’s starting-point became mere fantasy. And nothing could be made from fantasy.
But Soames found frustration rampant even among the men who were most successful with the fantasy-trick. There were new devices. They were triumphs. They were plainly the beginnings of progress of a brand-new kind, not derived wholly from the present, and certainly not imitative of the children’s. But the devices couldn’t be used. Their existence couldn’t be revealed. Because anything of unprecedented design would seem to have been learned from the children, and the United States insisted—truthfully—that so far it had learned nothing from them. But nobody would believe it if a spate of astonishing technological improvements began to appear in the United States.
Dislike of America rose to new heights anyhow. But presently some trace of suspicion began to appear in the actions of the anti-American nations. Before the broadcast, a dirty trick had been prepared against America. It developed and succeeded. It was not discovered until too late. Somebody tried another one. It wasn’t anticipated or stopped. A very lively and extremely tempting idea occurred in quarters where the United States was much disliked. But nobody dared quite believe it—yet.
Then Fran disappeared. He vanished as if into thin air. At one moment he was in the heavily guarded surface area over the hidden base in the Rockies. The next moment he was gone. Three separate lines of electrified fence protected the area from intrusion, with sentries and watching-posts besides. But Fran disappeared as if he’d never been. It was not easy to imagine that he’d run away. His English was still very limited. His ignorance of American ways was abysmal. He couldn’t hope to hide and find food while accomplishing anything at all. On the other hand, for him to have been kidnapped out of the top-secret base was unthinkable. Yet if he had…
Soames got transportation to the Rocky Mountain installation.
He was shocked when he saw Gail.
CHAPTER 8
She smiled faintly in the darkness after they’d paused on the way to the cottage, and after Soames had released her.
“When this is all over, we’ll have our life together, you know that, don’t you?”
“I’m glad,” she said quietly, “that you feel the way you do. I’m thinner. I’m not very pretty just now. But it’s because I’m worried, Brad.”
He muttered angrily. He felt that infuriated rage which was appropriate because something worried Gail.
“I told the children you were coming,” Gail added. “I think they’ll be glad to see you. I’ve an idea Fran especially liked you, Brad.”
“No word of him?”
“N-no,” said Gail in an odd tone.
“Did he run away?” demanded Soames. They were walking through a soft-warm dusk toward the cottage where Gail stayed with the children.
Gail said in a low tone:
“Careful! The idea of telepathy is alarming. Everything’s overheard, Brad. The children are watched every second. I even think there are microphones.…”
Soames scowled.
“It’s security,” said Gail. “It would be taking too big a gamble to risk that the children can only receive sensory impressions and only through those little devices in their belts. Nobody’s been able to make the belt-devices do more than that, but they can’t be sure.…”
“They took the belts away!” insisted Soames.
“Yes. But it doesn’t seem enough. You destroyed their signalling device. But you don’t feel safe. They’ve taken the devices, but they still don’t feel sure that the children can’t do more.
“And, I thought it was wise to tell Captain Moggs about us. To explain why you might want to come back here. They know I’m rather protective of the children. An explanation for you to come back seemed wise. The children aren’t popular since they’ve been thought able to read minds. So I wanted you to be able to come back without anybody suspecting you of friendly feelings for them.”
“I’d have come back on account of you,” growled Soames. “So it mustn’t appear that anybody wants to be decent to them, eh?” Then he said abruptly, “About Fran.…”
“He ran away,” said Gail with a hint of defiance. “I’ll tell you more later, maybe.”
They reached the cottage, and Soames reminded himself that anything he said would very probably be overheard and recorded on tape. They went inside. The boy Hod, and the younger girl Mal lay on their stomachs on the floor, doggedly working at what would be lessons. Zani sat in a chair with a book before her and her hand seemingly shielding her eyes. Her expression was abstracted.
As they entered, Hod made a clicking sound in his throat. Zani put one hand quickly in her pocket and opened her eyes. They had been closed. The book was a prop to hide something.
* * * *
Soames had a flash of insight. He’d worn a belt with a built-in quasi-telepathic device just once and for the briefest of times. While he wore it, too, he’d been fiercely intent upon the use of it to recover another such device that had been looted in the broadcast studio during the most disastrous of all public-relations enterprises. He’d had no time for experiment; no time to accustom himself to the singular feeling of seeming to inhabit more than one body at a time. He’d had no opportunity to explore the possibilities of the device. But he’d worked out some angles since.
And because of it, he knew intuitively what Zani had been doing when he arrived. With closed eyes, hidden by her hand, she’d been receiving something that came from somewhere else. The two other children had kept silent. Hod clicked his tongue as a warning of Gail’s and Soames’ approach. And Zani put her hand in her pocket quickly and opened her eyes. She’d put something away. And Soames knew with certainty that she’d been receiving a message from Fran, in the teeth of merciless watching and probably microphonic eavesdropping on every word.
But the children’s belt with the sensory-transmitters and receivers had been taken from them.
* * * *
Little Mal said politely:
“Fran.” A pause. “Where is?”
“I’d like to know,” Soames told her.
“That’s almost the only thing they’re ever questioned about, nowadays,” said Gail. “As a security measure only Captain Moggs and enlisted personnel without classified information, and the police who’re hunting for Fran, are allowed to talk to them.”
“Fran’s been gone—how long? A week? Over?” Soames scowled. “How can he hide? He knows li
ttle English! He doesn’t even know how to act so he won’t be spotted if he walks down a street!”
Gail said with an odd intonation:
“I’m afraid he’s in the wilds somewhere. He won’t know how to get food. He’ll be in danger from wild animals. I’m terribly afraid for him!”
Soames looked at her sharply.
“How’d he get away?”
“He roamed around, like boys do,” said Gail. “He made friends, more or less, with the children of a staff sergeant’s family. It was thought there could be no harm in that. And one morning he left here apparently to go and play with them, and they didn’t see him, and he hasn’t been seen since.”
Hod was on his stomach again, doggedly working over a book, murmuring English words as he turned the pages from one picture to another. Mal and Zani looked from the face of Soames to that of Gail, and back again.
“They understand more than they can speak,” said Gail.
Soames searched the walls of the room. Gail had said microphones were probable. He looked intently at Zani. He duplicated her position when he’d entered and her actions, the quick movement of her hand to her pocket and the opening of her eyes. She tensed, staring at him. He shook his head warningly and put his finger to his lips.
She caught her breath and looked at him strangely. He settled down to visit. Gail, with the air of someone doing something that did not matter, had the children display their English. Their accent was good. Their vocabularies were small. Soames guessed that Gail drilled them unceasingly in pronunciation so they wouldn’t acquire so many words that they could be expected to answer involved questions. It was a way to postpone pressure upon them.
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 178