Baldy

by Henry Kuttner

  Sue said aloud, "I'll have a Martini. Do you mind if I talk? It helps." And she glanced around, physically this time, at the cages. "I don't see how you stand it, even with your training. I should think you could drive a Baldy perfectly gibbering just by shutting him up in a zoo overnight."

  Barton grinned, and automatically his mind began sorting out the vibrations from all around him: the casual trivialities from the monkeys, broken by a pattern of hysteria as a capuchin caught the scent of jaguar; the primal, implacable vibrations from the panthers and lions, with their undertone of sheer, proud confidence; the gentle, almost funny radiations from the seals. Not that they could be called reasoning thoughts; the brains were those of animals, but basically the same colloid organism existed under fur and scales as existed under the auburn wig of Sue Connaught.

  After a while, over Martinis, she asked, "Have you ever fought a duel?"

  Barton instinctively glanced around. He touched the small dagger at his belt. "I'm a Baldy, Sue."

  "So you haven't."

  "Naturally not." He didn't trouble to explain; she knew the reason as well as he did. For Baldies could not risk capitalizing on their special ability except in very limited cases. A telepath can always win a duel. If David hadn't killed Goliath, eventually the Philistines would have mobbed the giant out of sheer jealousy. Had Goliath been smart, he would have walked with his knees bent.

  Sue said, "That's all right. I've had to be very careful. This is so confidential I don't know who--" Her barrier was still up strongly.

  "I've been in Africa for six months. Maybe I'm not up with current events." Both of them were feeling the inadequacy of words, and it made them impatient.

  "Not current... future. Things are ... help from ... qualify-" She stopped and forced herself into the slower grammatical form of communication. "I've got to get help somewhere, and it's got to be one of Us. Not only that, but a very special kind of person. You qualify."

  "How?"

  "Because you're a naturalist," she said. "I've looked the field over, but you know what sort of work. We usually get. Sedentary occupations. Semantics experts, medical and psychiatric interns, biologists like me, police assistants--that came closer, but I need a man who... who can get the jump on another Baldy."

  Barton stared and frowned. "A duel?"

  "I think so," she said. "I can't be sure yet. But it seems the only way. This must be completely secret, Dave, absolutely secret. If a word of it ever got out, it would be ... very bad for Us."

  He knew what she meant, and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. That shadow always hung over every Baldy.

  "What is it?"

  She didn't answer directly. "You're a naturalist. That's fine. What I need is a man who can meet a telepath on slightly more than equal terms. No non-Baldy would do, even if I could talk about this to a non-Baldy. What I've got to get is a man with a fast-moving mind who's also trained his body to respond faster than instantly."

  "Uh-huh."

  "There weren't many," she said. "Even when minds move at the same speed, there's always a fractional difference in muscular response. And we're not too well trained. Games of competitive skill--"

  "I've thought of that," Barton said. "More than once, too. Any game based on war is unsuitable for Us."

  "Any game in which you face your opponent. I like golf, but I can't play tennis."

  "Well," Barton told her, "I don't box or wrestle. Or play chess, for that matter. But skip-handball--have you seen that?"

  She shook her head.

  "The backboard's full of convolutions; you never know which way the ball would bounce. And the board's in sections that keep sliding erratically. You can control the force, but not the direction. That's one way. It's something new, and naturally it isn't advertised, but a friend of mine's got one at his place. A man named Denham."

  "He told me about you."

  "I thought so."

  "Uh-huh. For fifteen years you've been catching everything from tigers to king cobras. That takes good timing, the way you do it. Any man who can outguess a king cobra--"

  "Watch your barrier," Barton said sharply. "I caught something then. Is it that bad?"

  She drew a shaky breath. "My control's lousy. Let's get out of here."

  Barton led her across the zoo's main area. As they passed the shark's tank he sent a quick glance down, and met the girl's eyes worriedly.

  "Like that, eh?"

  She nodded. "Like that. But you can't put Them in cages."

  Over catfish and Shasta white wine she told him--

  You can't put Them in cages. Shrewd, dangerous, but very careful now. They were the middle group of the three telepathic assortments. The same mutation, but... but!

  The hard radiations had been plain dynamite. When you implant a completely new function in the delicate human brain, you upset a beautiful and long-standing balance. So there had been three groups: one was a complete failure, thrust into the mental borderland of insanity, dementia praecox and paranoia. Another group, to which Sue Connaught and

  Barton belonged-the vast majority-were able to adjust to a nontelepathic world. They wore wigs.

  But the middle group was paranoid--and sane.

  Among these telepaths were found the maladjusted egotists, the ones who for a long time had refused to wear wigs, and who had bragged of their superiority. They had the cunning and the utter self-justification of the true paranoid type, and were basically antisocial. But they were not mad.

  And you can't put Them in cages. For they were telepaths, and how can you cage the mind?

  They finished with Brazilian chocolate cake, demitasse and Mississippi liqueur, made by the monks of Swanee monastery. Barton touched his cigarette tip to the igniter paper on the pack. He inhaled smoke.

  "It's not a big conspiracy, then."

  "These things start small. A few men-but you see the danger."

  Barton nodded. "I see it, O.K. It's plenty bad medicine. A few paranoid-type Baldies, working out a crazy sabotage scheme-Tell me -a little more first, though. For instance, why me? And why you?"

  To a nontelepath the question might have been obscure. Sue raised her brows and said, "You, because you've got the reflexes I spoke of and because I had the luck to find you before I got desperate enough to look for a substitute. As for me"--she hesitated--"that's the oddest part. No one could have stumbled onto them except by accident. Because telepathy, of course, isn't tight-beam. It's a broadcast. Any receptive mind can pick it up. The minute enough people band together to make a city, that's noticeable. And the minute Baldies get together and form any sort of organization, that's noticeable too. Which is why paranoids never made much trouble, except individually. Banding together would have meant running up a flag-one that could be seen for miles."

  "And so?"

  "So they've got this special means of communication. It's secret, absolutely unbreakable code. Only it isn't merely code. Then we could detect and trace down, even if we couldn't break it. This is telepathic communication on an entirely new band, one we can't even touch. I don't know how they do it. It might be partly mechanical, or it might not. Children have a higher perceptive level, but we can catch their thoughts. This is mental ultraviolet. Do you realize the implications?"

  Smoke jetted from Barton's nostrils. "Yeah. It wrecks the balance of power-completely. Up to now, decentralization has kept peace. Nobody dared band together or get too big for their boots. They could be detected. But these bichos are wearing invisible cloaks." His hand clenched. "It could become worldwide! The one form of organization we can't fight!"

  "It's got to be fought," she said. "It's got to be smashed. And fast, before anyone suspects. If non-Baldies ever find out, there'll be a wave of anti-Baldism that could wipe Us out. If that should happen, people wouldn't stop to sort out the social and the antisocial groups. They'd say, 'We've been nursing a viper, and it's got fangs. Kill 'em all."

  Outside the window a man on horseback clattered past, hoofbeats making
an urgent rhythm in Barton's brain.

  "How many are there?"

  "I told you it's just beginning. Only a few more. But it can spread. I suppose the immediate difficulty is in their training neophytes in their special trick telepathy. That's why I think it must be physically self-induced. Gadgets can be detected. And mobility would be necessary; they'd never know when they had to get in touch with each other. You can't pack around a big gadget."

  "You could camouflage it," Barton said. "Or it might be pretty small."

  "It might," she said, "but there's this little girl--Melissa Carr. She tapped their wave without a gadget. She must be some mutant variant."

  "Melissa Carr?" echoed Barton. "Where does she come in?"

  "Oh, I haven't told you. She's my contact. I've been in touch with her off and on for a week or so, but it was only yesterday that she let slip, very casually, what she'd learned on that special thought band."

  "She isn't one of them, then?"

  "I'm sure not. It's very odd. Even the way she reached me first--" Sue had been dressing for a party, and the tentative fingering question had crept into her mind. "It was like Cinderella, somehow. I could feel the pleasure she took in the dress I was wearing, a Mozambique model, and the Karel bag. She strung along with me mentally all evening. And after that--" After that communication had been established.

  But it had been days before Melissa spoke of the telepathic signals she had inadvertently tuned in on.

  "She guessed what they meant, but she didn't seem much impressed by the danger. I mean, it didn't strike her that something ought to be done. There's some mystery about Melissa; sometimes I've even thought she might have been a member of the group once, and pulled out. Sometimes she won't answer my signals at all. But now that she's told me about this—Faxe--I think I've convinced her of the danger. Sam Faxe. He's one of the paranoids, and from what I've learned, he's trying to sabotage some experiments in Galileo."

  "Why?"

  "That's what I don't know. Apparently the paranoids are so familiar with their basic plan that they don't need even to think about it. Their thoughts deal with immediate action. And always on that special wave length we can't catch. Only Melissa, as far as I know, can get it, and she must have been born receptive."

  "Some are," Barton agreed. "Mutants certainly vary a lot, far more than nonmutants. As for this long-term scheme, you know the paranoid type. They figure Baldies were made to rule the world. They look on ordinary humans as a lower species. And if they're trying to sabotage experiments, that's significant. I wonder what sort of experiment this Galileo business is?"

  "I don't know," Sue said. "Melissa's very shaky on technology."

  "I can find out through Denham. He lives in Galileo."

  "That's where I met him. But maybe you can get more out of Melissa than I can. It isn't wise to"--she hesitated, substituting a familiar word for the unimaginable mental terms--"telepath her too much, but it's necessary, of course. If you feel any probing, sheer off right away."

  "Has there been any?"

  "No. Not yet. But we must keep in the dark."

  Sue hadn't asked Barton if-- he would help; she knew that he would. Preservation of the race had been implanted in every Baldy, though in the paranoid type it had been warped and distorted. Now Sue's mind reached out, searching, questioning, seeking the lock to fit her key. And almost immediately the answer came. It was like one hand drawing two others together, Sue mentally introducing Melissa Carr to Barton. He felt something fumble, shy and almost gauche, and then

  They locked. He sent out friendliness and warm assurance. Instantly he was conscious of a strong femininity that amounted almost to sexual attraction. Half clear, half clouded, he sensed what Melissa Carr meant to herself: the intangible consciousness of living ego, different in each individual, and the softness of curling hair-hair? Wig-and the softness of a mouth against fingers drawn gently across them. A demure withdrawal that had in it shades of color and scent, and then something that was the equivalent of a curtsey, purely mental, and with an oddly old-fashioned flavor. After that, he knew he could never mistake Melissa Carr's mind for that of another Baldy.

  This is Dave Barton, Melissa.

  {Recognition and pleasure-shading.} A question: trust? So much danger--

  Utter trust, yes—{strong affirmative.}

  Many-(different)-messages coming strongly

  Shadow of menace of Sam Faxe Urgency--A growing explosive stain in Galileo

  Cannot speak-another symbol for speak-long. Possible personal danger--

  And all these gradations of meaning at once, three minds interlocking like a color wheel, focusing to the central white spot of revelation and truth. There were no barriers, as in oral conversation. Like light the thoughts intermeshed and wove in question, answer, and statement, and despite the concentration, all three had time for the more intimate shadings that took the place of tonal values. It was the capacity for such rapport that made round-table debates so popular among Baldies; the logical and aesthetic play of minds that could ultimately resolve into an ecstasy of complete common awareness. Physically there was no polygamy among Baldies, but mentally the social group had expanded, lending an additional depth and richness to their lives.

  But this was merely a hint of complete rapport. Barton was searching for clues in what Melissa told him. He was no technician either, so he was going at it from another angle; that of the naturalist, trained in probing protective coloration, skilled in unraveling the predator's tangled tracks.

  How many?

  Three.

  No more?

  Three-and images of Galileo and other towns, symbols of names and identities. A feeling of shadowy communion, links of hatred—

  And suddenly, in her mind, he sensed something curiously, disturbingly familiar. He did not know what it was. But momentarily it broke the smooth flow of communication, while he searched.

  It was nothing; he concentrated again. Three?

  Known name Sam Faxe Symbol—{Power-lust}

  {Heavy lethargy}

  There were other evoked connotations, but he thought he would know Sam Faxe now.

  The other symbols, resolving into names: Ed Vargan, mixed with a curious concept of size-difference; and Bertram Smith, where there was sensed a cruelty akin to that of the blood-drinking carnivores. Though with a difference; Barton had reached into the mind of a weasel when it was feasting, and the sheer flood of ecstasy had almost frightened him. Smith was intelligent, though he, like the others, had that singular quality of--of what?

  {Darkness. Distortion. Blindness.}

  Yes, Sue thought, they're blind. Blinded by their paranoia. They can't see this world at all-as ifs meant to be.

  And Melissa's visualization of the three: vicious small things running through the dark, teeth bared. She identified them, Barton realized, with-what?-with mice; she had a horror of mice, which to her were far more horrible than insects or snakes. Well, he could understand phobias; he himself was abnormally afraid of fire. Most Baldies were phobic in one degree or another, a penalty paid for increased mental sensitivity.

  He thought: "I" must move fast. If they communicate, they may go into hiding. "I" must kill them at one stroke. Can they read your mind?

  They do not know Melissa Carr exists. But if one is killed, they will be warned. You must be kept safe. Where are you? {Refusal, definite refusal.}

  It would be best to tell me, so--

  No one can find me as long as 1 don't think my location. There are no directional finders for telepathy. The concept she expressed meant more than telepathy; it was the symbol for a whole race and its unity.

  Can you locate Vargan and Smith?

  Certainly; they spoke freely in their private wave length; Vargan is in Rye; Smith is in Huron.

  How is it you can catch their wave length?

  {Puzzlement. A helpless mental shrug} Born to me?

  Barton thought: When one of them dies, the others will be warned. Listen carefully.
Be sure to relay their plans. They must not escape.

  Melissa thought of the three small, gray, vicious things scuttling across the floor. Barton grinned tightly.

  See how they run, he told her. See where they run to. His hand touched his dagger. It was not a carving knife, but it would do.

  There was not much more. Melissa relayed some of the paranoid thoughts she had caught, and Barton's guess at the menace of the paranoids was confirmed. They were deadly, in the long run, to the whole mutant group. Individual deaths did not matter much, in this era of the duello, but to risk the good will of the entire race was mad-dog tactics. Nor did there seem to be any motive. Sheer malice? It was not logical, and paranoids are always logical, though their structure is founded on a false keystone. The single clue that would give the whole a meaning was, so far, lacking. Nor could Barton find it by turning to his training as a naturalist. Animals do not commit sabotage. Nor do birds foul their own nests.

  After Melissa had left them, Sue showed her impatience. "I want to help," she said, orally now. "There must be some way."

  "There isn't. You said yourself that this takes a very special skill. You're a biologist. You don't react instantly, the way I do, and if you were along, my attention would be diverted. I've got to concentrate."

  "You'll kill them, then?"

  "Certainly I'll kill them. Luckily there are only three, according to Melissa. She wasn't lying; I could tell that."

  "Oh, she's honest," Sue agreed. "But she's certainly hiding something."

  Barton shrugged. "It doesn't matter. What this calls for is prompt action. I can't do much investigating. If I plant any thoughts or questions in non-Baldy minds, the paranoids will start wondering. I've got to eradicate those bichos before the infection spreads. There are plenty of paranoid Baldies who'd join a movement like that, if they were able to master the secret wave length."

  "So what'll I do?"

  "It doesn't matter," Barton said, "now. Your job's finished. It's my meat now."

  They stood up together. Outside, on the village sidewalk, he left her, with a handclasp that held a deep significance. All around them the casual, evening life of the town was moving, brightly lighted and symbolic of the vast, intricate check-and-balance system that held civilization together. The civilization that tolerated Baldies, and, though perhaps a little grudgingly, gave them a chance to work out their own salvation. Both of them were thinking of the same thing: how easily that ordinary throng could be integrated into a blood-hungry mob. It had happened before, when Baldies were still new to the world, and the danger still smoldered.