Brain Twister p-1

by Mark Phillips

  “Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI,” the Queen finished for him. “Yes, I know. It’s very nice to meet you at last. I’ve seen you on television, and over the video phone. You photograph badly, you know.”

  “I do?” Burris said pleasantly. It was obvious that he was keeping himself under very tight control.

  Malone felt remotely sorry for the man — but only remotely. Burris might as well know, he thought, what they had all been going through the past several days.

  Her Majesty was saying something about the honorable estate of knighthood, and the Queen’s list. Malone began paying attention when she came to: and I hereby dub thee—” She stopped suddenly, turned and said: “Sir Kenneth, give me your weapon.”

  Malone hesitated for a long, long second. But Burris’ eye was on him, and he could interpret the look without much trouble. There was only one thing for him to do. He pulled out his .44, ejected the cartridges in his palm (and reminded himself to reload the gun as soon as he got it back), and handed the weapon to the Queen, butt foremost.

  She took the butt of the revolver in her right hand, leaned out the window of the car, and said in a fine, distinct voice: “Kneel, Andrew.”

  Malone watched with wide, astonished eyes as Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI, went to one knee in a low and solemn genuflection. Queen Elizabeth Thompson nodded her satisfaction.

  She tapped Burris gently on each shoulder with the muzzle of the gun. “I knight thee Sir Andrew,” she said. She cleared her throat. “My, this desert air is dry… Rise, Sir Andrew, and know that you are henceforth Knight Commander of the Queen’s Own FBI.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Burris said humbly.

  He rose to his feet silently. The Queen withdrew into the car again and handed the gun back to Malone. He thumbed the cartridges into the chambers of the cylinder and listened dumbly.

  “Your Majesty,” Burris said, “this is Dr. Harry Gamble, the head of Project Isle. Dr. Gamble, this is Her Majesty the Queen; Lady Barbara Wilson, her — uh — her lady-in-waiting; Sir Kenneth Malone; and King — I mean Sir Thomas Boyd.” He gave the four a single bright impartial smile. Then he tore his eyes away from the others, and bent his gaze on Sir Kenneth Malone. “Come over here a minute, Malone,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “I want to talk to you.”

  Malone climbed out of the car and went around to meet Burris. He felt just a little worried as he followed the Director away from the car. True, he had sent Burris a long telegram the night before, in code. But he hadn’t expected the man to show up in Yucca Flats. There didn’t seem to be any reason for it.

  And when there isn’t any reason, Malone told himself sagely, it’s a bad one.

  “What’s the trouble, Chief?” he asked.

  Burris sighed. “None so far,” he said quietly. “I got a report from the Nevada State Patrol, and ran it through R I. They identified the men you killed, all right — but it didn’t do us any good. They’re hired hoods.”

  “Who hired them?” Malone said.

  Burris shrugged. “Somebody with money,” he said. “Hell, men like that would kill their own grandmothers if the price were right — you know that. We can’t trace them back any farther.”

  Malone nodded. That was, he had to admit, bad news. But then, when had he last had any good news?

  “We’re nowhere near our telepathic spy,” Burris said. “We haven’t come any closer than we were when we started. Have you got anything? Anything at all, no matter how small?”

  “Not that I know of, sir,” Malone said.

  “What about the little old lady — what’s her name? Thompson. Anything from her?”

  Malone hesitated. “She has a close fix on the spy, sir,” he said slowly, “but she doesn’t seem able to identify him right away.”

  “What else does she want?” Burris said. “We’ve made her Queen and given her a full retinue in costume; we’ve let her play roulette and poker with Government money. Does she want to hold a mass execution? If she does, I can supply some Congressmen, Malone. I’m sure it could be arranged.” He looked at the agent narrowly. “I might even be able to suppply an FBI man or two,” he added.

  Malone swallowed hard. “I’m trying the best I can, sir,” he said. “What about the others?”

  Burris looked even unhappier than usual. “Come along,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

  When they got back to the car, Dr. Gamble was talking spiritedly with Her Majesty about Roger Bacon. “Before my time, of course,” the Queen was saying, “but I’m sure he was a most interesting man. Now when dear old Marlowe wrote his Faust, he and I had several long discussions about such matters. Alchemy, Doctor—”

  Burris interrupted with: “I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but we must get on. Perhaps you’ll be able to continue your — ah — audience later.” He turned to Boyd. “Sir Thomas,” he said with an effort, “drive directly to the Westinghouse buildings. Over that way.” He pointed. “Dr. Gamble will ride with you, and the rest of us will follow in the second car. Let’s move.”

  He stepped back as the project head got into the car, and watched it roar off. Then he and Malone went to the second car, another FBI Lincoln. Two agents were sitting in the back seat, with a still figure between them.

  With a shock, Malone recognized William Logan and the agents he’d detailed to watch the telepath. Logan’s face did not seem to have changed expression since Malone had seen it last, and he wondered wildly if perhaps it had to be dusted once a week.

  He got in behind the wheel and Burris slid in next to him.

  “Westinghouse,” Burris said. “And let’s get there in a hurry.”

  “Right,” Malone said, and started the car.

  “We just haven’t had a single lead,” Burris said. “I was hoping you’d come up with something. Your telegram detailed the fight, of course, and the rest of what’s been happening — but I hoped there’d be something more.”

  “There isn’t,” Malone was forced to admit. “All we can do is try to persuade Her Majesty to tell us—”

  “Oh, I know it isn’t easy,” Burris said. “But it seems to me…”

  By the time they’d arrived at the administrative offices of Westinghouse’s psionics research area, Malone found himself wishing that something would happen. Possibly, he thought, lightning might strike, or an earthquake swallow everything up. He was, suddenly, profoundly tired of the entire affair.

  Chapter 8

  Four days later, he was more than tired. He was exhausted. The six psychopaths — including Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I — had been housed in a converted dormitory in the Westinghouse area, together with four highly nervous and even more highly trained and investigated psychiatrists from St. Elizabeths in Washington. The Convention of Nuts, as Malone called it privately, was in full swing.

  And it was every bit as strange as he’d thought it was going to be. Unfortunately, five of the six (Her Majesty being the only exception) were completely out of contact with the world. The psychiatrists referred to them in worried tones as “unavailable for therapy,” and spent most of their time brooding over possible ways of bringing them back into the real world for a while, at least far enough so that they could be spoken with.

  Malone stayed away from the five who were completely psychotic. The weird babblings of fifty-year-old Barry Miles disconcerted him. They sounded like little Charlie O’Neill’s strange semi-connected jabber, but Westinghouse’s Dr. O’Connor said that it seemed to represent another pheomenon entirely. William Logan’s blank face was a memory of horror, but the constant tinkling giggles of Ardith Parker, the studied and concentrated way that Gordon Macklin wove meaningless patterns in the air with his waving fingers, and the rhythmless, melodyless humming that seemed to be all there was to the personality of Robert Cassiday were simply too much for Malone. Taken singly, each was frightening and remote; all together, they wove a picture of insanity that chilled him more than he wanted to admit.

  Wh
en the seventh telepath was flown in from Honolulu, Malone didn’t even bother to see her. He let the psychiatrists take over directly, and simply avoided their sessions.

  Queen Elizabeth I, on the other hand, he found genuinely likeable. According to the psych boys, she had been (as both Malone and Her Majesty had theorized) heavily frustrated by being the possessor of a talent which no one else recognized. Beyond that, the impact of other minds was disturbing; there was a slight loss of identity which seemed to be a major factor in every case of telepathic insanity. But the Queen had compensated for her frustrations in the easiest possible way; she had simply traded her identity for another one, and had rationalized a single, overruling delusion: that she was Queen Elizabeth I of England, still alive and wrongfully deprived of her throne.

  “It’s a beautiful rationalization,” one of the psychiatrists said with more than a trace of admiration in his voice. “Complete and thoroughly consistent. She’s just traded identities — and everything else she does — everything else — stems logically out of her delusional premise. Beautiful.”

  She may have been crazy, Malone realized. But she was a long way from stupid.

  The project was in full swing. The only trouble was that they were no nearer finding the telepath than they had been three weeks before. With five completely blank human beings to work with, and the sixth Queen Elizabeth (Malone heard privately that the last telepath, the girl from Honolulu, was no better than the first five; she had apparently regressed into what one of the psychiatrists called a “non-identity childhood syndrome.” Malone didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded terrible.) — with that crew, Malone could see why progress was their most difficult commodity.

  Dr. Harry Gamble, the head of Project Isle, was losing poundage by the hour with worry. And, Malone reflected, he could ill afford it.

  Burris, Malone and Boyd had set themselves up in a temporary office within the Westinghouse area. The Director had left his assistant in charge in Washington. Nothmg, he said over and over again, was as important as the spy in Project Isle.

  Apparently Boyd had come to believe that, too. At any rate, though he was still truculent, there were no more outbursts of rebellion.

  But, on the fourth day:

  “What do we do now?” Burris asked.

  “Shoot ourselves,” Boyd said promptly.

  “Now, look here—” Malone began, but he was overruled.

  “Boyd,” Burris said levelly, “if I hear any more of that sort of pessimism, you’re going to be an exception to the beard rule. One more crack out of you, and you can go out and buy yourself a razor.”

  Boyd put his hand over his chin protectively, and said nothing at all.

  “Wait a minute,” Malone said. “Aren’t there any sane telepaths in the world?”

  “We can’t find any,” Burris said. “We—”

  There was a knock at the office door.

  “Who’s there?” Burris called.

  “Dr. Gamble,” said the man’s surprisingly baritone voice.

  Burris called: “Come in, Doctor,” and the door opened. Dr. Gamble’s lean face looked almost haggard.

  “Mr. Burris,” he said, extending his arms a trifle, “can’t anything be done?” Malone had seen Gamble speaking before, and had wondered if it would be possible for the man to talk with his hands tied behind his back. Apparently it wouldn’t be. “We feel that we are approaching a critical stage in Project Isle,” the scientist said, enclosing one fist within the other hand. “If anything more gets out to the Soviets, we might as well publish our findings—” a wide, outfiung gesture of both arms — “in the newspapers.”

  Burris stepped back. “We’re doing the best we can, Dr. Gamble,” he said. All things considered, his obvious try at radiating confidence was nearly successful. “After all,” he went on, “we know a great deal more than we did four days ago. Miss Thompson has assured us that the spy is right here, within the compound of Yucca Flats Labs. We’ve bottled everything up in this compound, and I’m confident that no information is at present getting through to the Soviet Government. Miss Thompson agrees with me.”

  “Miss Thompson?” Gamble said, one hand at his bearded chin.

  “The Queen,” Burris said.

  Gamble nodded and two fingers touched his forehead. “Ah,” he said. “Of course.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “But we can’t keep everybody who’s here now locked up forever. Sooner or later we’ll have to let them-” His left hand described the gesture of a man tossing away a wad of paper — ”go.” His hands fell to his sides. “We’re lost, unless we can find that spy.”

  “We’ll find him,” Burris said with a show of great confidence.

  “But—”

  “Give her time,” Burris said. “Give her time. Remember her mental condition.”

  Boyd looked up. “Rome,” he said in an absent fashion, “wasn’t built in a daze.”

  Burris glared at him, but said nothing. Malone filled the conversational hole with what he thought would be nice, and hopeful, and untrue.

  “We know he’s someone on the reservation, so we’ll catch him eventually,” he said. “And as long as his information isn’t getting into Soviet hands, we’re safe.” He glanced at his wristwatch.

  Dr. Gamble said: “But—”

  “My, my,” Malone said. “Almost lunchtime. I have to go over and have lunch with Her Majesty. Maybe she’s dug up something more.”

  “I hope so,” Dr. Gamble said, apparently successfully deflected. “I do hope so.”

  “Well,” Malone said, “pardon me.” He shucked off his coat and trousers. Then he proceeded to put on the doublet and hose that hung in the little office closet. He shrugged into the fur-trimmed, slash-sleeved coat, adjusted the plumed hat to his satisfaction with great care, and gave Burris and the others a small bow. “I go to an audience with Her Majesty, gentlemen,” he said in a grave, well-modulated voice. “I shall return anon.”

  He went out the door and closed it carefully behind him. When he had gone a few steps he allowed himself the luxury of a deep sigh.

  Then he went outside and across the dusty street to the barracks where Her Majesty and the other telepaths were housed. No one paid any attention to him, and he rather missed the stares he’d become used to drawing. But by now, everybody was used to seeing Elizabethan clothing. Her Majesty had arrived at a new plateau.

  She would now allow no one to have audience with her unless he was properly dressed. Even the psychiatrists — whom she had, with a careful sense of meiosis, appointed Physicians to the Royal House — had to wear the stuff.

  Malone went over the whole case in his mind — for about the thousandth time, he told himself bitterly.

  Who could the telepathic spy be? It was like looking for a needle in a rolling stone, he thought. Or something. He did remember clearly that a stitch in time saved nine, but he didn’t know nine what, and suspected it had nothing to do with his present problem.

  How about Dr. Harry Gamble, Malone thought. It seemed a little unlikely that the head of Project Isle would be spying on his own men — particularly since he already had all the information. But, on the other hand, he was just as probable a spy as anybody else.

  Malone moved onward. Dr. Thomas O’Connor, the Westinghouse psionics man, was the next nominee. Before Malone had actually found Her Majesty, he had had a suspicion that O’Connor had cooked the whole thing up to throw the FBI off the trail and confuse everybody, and that he’d intended merely to have the FBI chase ghosts while the real spy did his work undetected.

  But what if O’Connor were the spy himself — a telepath? What if he were so confident of his ability to throw the Queen off the track that he had allowed the FBI to find all the other telepaths? There was another argument for that: he’d had to report the findings of his machine no matter what it cost him; there were too many other men on his staff who knew about it.

  O’Connor was a perfectly plausible spy, too. But he didn’t seem very lik
ely. The head of a government project is likely to be a much-investigated man. Could any tie-up with Russia — even a psionic one — stand up against that kind of investigation? It was possible. Anything, after all, was possible. You eliminated the impossible, and then whatever remained, however improbable…

  Malone told himself morosely to shut up and think.

  O’Connor, he told himself, might be the spy. It would be a pleasure, he realized, to go to the office of that superior scientist and arrest him. “I know your true name,” he muttered. “It isn’t O’Connor, it’s Moriarty.” He wondered if the Westinghouse man had ever done any work on the dynamics of an asteroid. Then he wondered what the dynamics of an asteroid were.

  But if O’Connor were the spy, nothing made sense. Why would he have disclosed the fact that people were having their minds read in the first place?

  Sadly, Malone gave up the idea.

  But, then, there were other ideas.

  The other psychiatrists, for instance…

  The only trouble with them, Malone realized, was that there seemed to be neither motive nor anything else to connect them to the case. There was no evidence, none in any direction.

  Why, there was just as much evidence that the spy was really Kenneth J. Malone, he told himself. And then he stopped.

  Maybe Tom Boyd had been thinking that way about him. Maybe Boyd suspected that he, Malone, was really the spy.

  Certainly it worked in reverse. Boyd…

  No, Malone told himself firmly. That was silly.

  If he were going to consider Boyd, he realized, he might as well go whole hog and think about Andrew J. Burris.

  And that really was ridiculous. Absolutely ridic…

  Well, Queen Elizabeth had seemed pretty certain when she’d pointed him out in Dr. Dowson’s office. And the fact that she’d apparently changed her mind didn’t have to mean very much. After all, how much faith could you place in Her Majesty at the best of times? If she’d made a mistake about Burris in the first place, she could just as well have made a mistake in the second place. Or about the spy’s being at Yucca Flats at all.