Strange Prey

by Chesbro, George C. ;

  “All right,” Victor said, concentrating his attention on a water stain just over Roger’s shoulder. “How do we stop it?”

  Roger blinked rapidly as if just startled by a loud noise or awakened from a deep sleep. “Stop it?”

  “That’s what I said, stop it! Do you think I want to stay like this?” Aware that he was almost yelling, Victor dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands and took a deep breath. “I’m an architect,” he continued more calmly. “I used to build things and that was all I ever asked out of life; it’s all I ask now. If you had any idea … but you don’t. There must be something you can do, an operation of some sort; I want it.”

  “That’s impossible at this point,” Roger replied, passing his hand over his eyes. His voice was now blurred with weariness. “To attempt any kind of operation now is out of the question; I wouldn’t even know what I was supposed to be operating on. Besides, another operation now would probably kill you.”

  “There may not be time,” Victor said, tapping his clenched fist gently but insistently on the table. “I tell you it’s getting worse; each day I know more about people I’ve never met, strangers I pass on the street. And my head hurts. For God’s sake, Roger, sometimes I wake up in the morning and I don’t—”

  “Have you considered the implications of this thing?” Roger seemed unaware of the fact that he had interrupted Victor. “You can read men’s minds, know their innermost feelings! There are all sorts of—”

  “I’ve thought about the implications and I don’t like any of them.”

  “Police work. Imagine, Victor! You would know beyond any doubt who was guilty and who was innocent …”

  “Some sort of mental Gestapo?”

  “… International relations, psychiatry …”

  “Forget it, Doctor,” Victor murmured, half-rising. His voice was very soft. “If you won’t help me, I’ll find somebody else who will.”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you,” Roger said, sobered by the intensity of Victor’s tone. “I said I didn’t think I could help you; at least, not yet, not until I know more. We’ll have to conduct tests and those will be mostly guesswork. Even if I do operate, there’s no way of knowing for sure whether it will do any good. That is, if it doesn’t kill you.”

  “I’ll take that chance. You can administer any test you want. The only thing I ask is that you do it quickly and that you keep this matter completely confidential.”

  “I’m afraid it’s already too late for that, Mr. Rafferty.”

  Startled, Victor leaped to his feet, knocking over the chair. He turned in the direction of the voice and was stunned to see a well-dressed woman standing behind him at an open door that he had assumed was a closet; now he could see the adjoining room beyond the door. The woman had been there all the time. She had seen and heard everything, and now Victor knew what Roger had been trying to hide.

  Visual and mental images came at him in a rush: young and attractive but cold, high self-esteem, exaggerated sense of self-importance, fiercely competitive, slightly paranoid, and habitually condescending. She concealed her nervousness well.

  “Tell me, Mr. Rafferty,” the woman continued, “don’t you think the scientific community—your country—has a right to know about you?”

  Victor turned slowly to Roger. “Who is she?” he asked very deliberately.

  Roger’s face was crimson. “Victor—Mr.

  Rafferty—I’d like you to meet Dr. Lewellyn, one of my colleagues.”

  “What the hell is she doing here?”

  “Victor, I … I asked Dr. Lewellyn to observe. I value her opinion. I thought perhaps—”

  “You had no right.” Victor turned to face the woman. “The answer to your question is no,” he said tightly. “Neither you nor anyone else has any right to my life or my personal problems.”

  “Mr. Rafferty, I don’t think you understand—”

  “I mean it, Roger,” Victor said, cutting her off, turning his back on her once again. “I expect this case to be handled with the utmost confidence. And I hold you responsible for this woman!” He hesitated, wondering why he suddenly felt so afraid. “If any word of this gets out, I’ll deny the whole thing,” Victor continued softly. “I’ll make both of you look very foolish. Roger, I’ll call you tomorrow. You can experiment with me all you want, but my condition must be kept secret. Is that clear?” He did not wait for an answer. Glancing once at Dr. Lewellyn, he walked quickly from the room.

  “You’ve made a fantastic discovery, Doctor,” the woman said.

  “Yes,” Roger agreed, but there was no trace of his former enthusiasm.

  “But he’s terribly naive, don’t you think? He must realize that we have certain obligations.”

  “I suppose so,” the doctor said, crumpling the cards in his hands and studying their motions as they drifted lazily to the floor.

  Pat Rafferty glanced up as her husband came through the door. She watched him for a moment, and her eyes clouded. “Victor,” she said gently, “you smell like a brewery.”

  “I should.” he said evenly. “I just drank a fifth of Scotch.” He went quickly into the bathroom and splashed water over his face and neck. When he came back into the living room he was startled to find his wife standing in the same spot staring at him, her pale blue eyes rimmed with tears of hurt and confusion. Six years of marriage to the slight, blonde-haired woman had not dulled his love for her; if anything, the years had magnified his desire and need. It had been three days since the tests in Roger’s laboratory and still he had not told Pat about them. It would have been hard enough, at the beginning, to tell her he feared for his sanity. Confirmation of his ability had only compounded his problem. How, he thought, does a man tell his wife she’s married to a monster? “I’m not drunk,” he said, turning away from her eyes. “I’m not even sure if it’s possible for me to get drunk anymore.”

  Pat continued to stare, dumbfounded at the words of this man who had, seemingly by intent, become a stranger to her. There was something in his eyes and voice that terrified her, robbed her of speech.

  “You see,” Victor continued, “I’ve made a remarkable discovery. If I drink enough, I can’t hear other people thinking. I’m left alone. I …” Victor stopped, aware that his need had spoken the words his intellect would not. He turned away to hide his own tears of anguish. He did not flinch when he felt Pat’s soft, cool fingers caressing the back of his neck. “I need your help,” he murmured, turning and burying his face in his wife’s hair.

  Victor talked for hours, pausing only once when night fell and Pat rose to turn on the kitchen lights. He told her everything: the pain, his fear, and the experiments in Roger’s office. When he had finished he drew himself up very straight and stared into her eyes. “Do you believe me?”

  “I don’t know, Victor. You’ve been acting so strangely for the past few months. I want to believe you, but …”

  “The alcohol’s worn off. Would you like me to demonstrate what I’m talking about?”

  “I …”

  “Think of a number. Go ahead; do as I say.”

  Victor held Pat’s gaze and waited, probing, hunting for the numbers that he knew must eventually merge with the doubt and confusion he felt in her mind. When they came, he called them off with machine-gun rapidity in a voice that never wavered. One by one he exposed every thought, every fleeting impression. He did not stop even when he felt the doubt replaced by panic. He could not escape the conviction that something terrible was about to happen. He needed Pat. Therefore, she must be convinced beyond any doubt that—

  “Stop!” Pat clapped her hands over her eyes in a vain attempt to stem the tide of thick, heavy tears that streamed in great rivulets down her cheeks. “Stop it, Victor! Stop it! Stop it!”

  Pat leaped from her chair and ran into the living room. Victor waited a few minutes and then followed. She was huddled on a far end of the sofa. He reached out to touch her but immediately stepped back as he felt her flesh quive
r beneath his touch. In that moment he had felt what she felt and the knowledge seared him. He stepped farther into the darkness to hide his own tears.

  “I’m not a freak,” he said quietly, and he turned away and headed back into the kitchen in an attempt to escape the sound of Pat’s sobbing.

  Her voice stopped him. “Forgive me, darling.”

  Victor stood silently, unwilling to trust his voice. He watched through the doorway as his wife sat up and brushed away the tears from her face.

  “I’m so ashamed,” Pat continued in a voice that was steady. “I don’t know what to say to you. All that time you were hurting so much … I love you so much, so very much …”

  He went to her, folded her into his arms. They stayed that way for several minutes, each enjoying the renewed warmth and security in the touch of the other’s body.

  “You’re afraid,” Pat said at last.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Victor told her about Dr. Lewellyn.

  “I still don’t understand why you’re so afraid.”

  “They’ll try to use me.”

  Pat pulled away just far enough to look up into Victor’s eyes. “There’s so much you could contribute, darling. Imagine what you could do in psychiatry, helping to diagnose patients. Think how much more scientists could learn from you about the human mind.”

  “They won’t use me for those things,” Victor said, surprised at the conviction in his voice. He had found the elusive source of his fear. “They’ll use me as a weapon.”

  Pat was silent for long moments, her head buried once again in his neck. “We’ll move away,” she said at last.

  “They’ll follow.”

  “We’ll change our names, start all over again.”

  “We’ll see,” Victor said, but he sensed that it was already too late.

  Later, Victor lay back in the darkness and listened to Pat’s troubled dreams. The orange-yellow glow of dawn trickled through the blinds of the bedroom window. He had not slept. If Roger was right, if his mind was, indeed, a window on Man’s future, what right did he have to keep that portal shuttered?

  Pat was beginning to stir and Victor recognized the sharpening thought patterns that he had learned to identify as the bridge between sleep and consciousness. He slipped on his robe and went to the kitchen to make coffee. Pat joined him a few minutes later, kissed Victor lightly on the cheek and began preparing breakfast.

  They ate in silence. Victor had poured a second cup of coffee and lighted a cigarette when the doorbell rang. He rose and kissed Pat full on the mouth, holding her close to him. He sensed, even before he had opened the door and looked into the man’s mind that the waiting was over.

  He was a small man. His short arms and thin, frail body were in direct contrast to the strength Victor found in his mind. His face was pale and pockmarked, punctuated with a large nose that sloped at an angle as if it had been broken once and never properly set. He wore a thick topcoat and even now, in the gathering warmth of the morning, drew it around him and shivered as if he were cold.

  “I’m Mr. Lippitt,” the man said to Victor. “I think you know why I’m here.”

  “Come in,” Victor said, surprised at the steadiness of his own voice. The man entered but politely refused Victor’s invitation to sit. Victor glanced over his shoulder at Pat and waited until she had returned to the kitchen. “What do you want, Mr. Lippitt?”

  The man suddenly thrust his hands into his pockets in a quick motion. The dark eyes in the pale face riveted on Victor, measuring his reaction as he allowed his thoughts and knowledge to rush forth.

  He’s too strong, Victor thought; too strong. But he didn’t react.

  “If my information is correct,” Mr. Lippitt said slowly, “you know what I’m thinking right now.”

  Victor returned the other man’s gaze. He sensed pain, chronic discomfort that Mr. Lippitt went to great lengths to conceal. “Are you sure you have the right house?” For the briefest moment there was a flicker of amusement in Mr. Lippitt’s eyes and Victor found that, in spite of himself, he liked the man.

  “The people I represent believe you have a rather remarkable talent, Mr. Rafferty. Obviously, I’m not referring to your abilities as an architect. We know all about your interviews with Dr. Burns. We’d like to test and interview you ourselves. We would pay well for the privilege.”

  “No,” Victor said evenly. “I don’t wish to be tested or interviewed by anyone.”

  Mr. Lippitt’s gaze was cold and steady. He hunched his shoulders deeper into his coat. “You understand that we could force you. We don’t want that. Surely, you can see the necessity—”

  “Well, I can’t see the necessity!” Victor exploded. “What do you want from me?”

  Lippitt’s face registered genuine surprise. He drew his hand out from his pocket and gestured toward his head. “Don’t you see?”

  “I know who you work for,” Victor said impatiently. “I can tell that you’re not quite sure what to do with me and that I’m considered some kind of potential threat. The rest is very vague. Your training was very thorough; you’re subconsciously blocking all sorts of information that you don’t think I should have.”

  “You scored perfectly on a telepathic indicator test,” Lippitt said, eyeing Victor curiously. “You can read thoughts like the rest of us read newspapers.”

  “It’s not quite that simple.”

  “But it could be! I’ve heard the tapes of your conversations with Burns! You can control—” Mr. Lippitt paused and again Victor sensed his physical discomfort. When Lippitt spoke again his voice was softer and his breath whistled in his lungs. “We live in an age of technological terror. Both sides spend millions of dollars gathering information to assure themselves that they’re not going to come out second best in any nuclear war.”

  “I’m not a spy, and I don’t have the training or inclination to become one.”

  “Your mind makes conventional methods of espionage obsolete,” Mr. Lippitt said, his eyes blazing. “Don’t you see, Mr. Rafferty? You could gather more information in one hour spent at an embassy cocktail party than a team of experts could gather in a year! One drink with a foreign ambassador or general and you’d have the most valuable diplomatic and military information! There’d be no way for them to stop you. You’d know who was lying, what military moves were being considered, information that other men must risk their lives to get! In a way, you’d be the ultimate weapon. We would always be assured of having the most up-to-date and reliable—”

  “Have I done anything wrong? Committed any crime?”

  “No,” Mr. Lippitt said, taken aback.

  “Do you have the authority to arrest me?”

  “No.”

  “Then my answer is still no” Victor said firmly. “I have a right as a citizen of this nation to be left alone.”

  “Have you considered your duty to this nation?”

  “How would you know I was always telling the truth?”

  “Ah, well … I don’t have an answer for that; not now. I suppose, eventually, we would have to consider that.”

  “I don’t want to work for you. I won’t work for you.”

  Mr. Lippitt lighted a cigarette. Victor handed him an ashtray. Their eyes held steady.

  “It’s not that simple, Mr. Rafferty,” Lippitt said. “It’s just not that simple. No matter what you decided, you’d still need our protection.”

  “Protection?” The idea was there in Lippitt’s mind but it was hazy and undefined.

  “Our informant—”

  “Dr.Lewellyn?”

  “Dr. Lewellyn was more fervent than discreet,” Mr. Lippitt said in a matter-of-fact tone that failed to conceal his embarrassment. “The channels she used to inform us of your existence were not, as we say, secure”

  “You mean that in the spy business nothing stays a secret for very long.”

  “Not always,” Mr. Lippitt said evenly, ignoring the other man’s sarcasm. “
But in this case we must assume that there’s a possibility other powers may already know about you. If so, well, I think they’d go to great lengths to prevent you from working for us.”

  “They’d kill me?”

  “Without a second thought. Unless, of course, they felt they could force you to work for them.”

  Victor was conscious of his wife moving about in the kitchen. “You’d have to eliminate every trace of my existence,” he said. “Otherwise, I’d be useless to you. And what are you going to do with Pat? Maybe she wouldn’t care to undergo plastic surgery. Certainly, I’d have to.”

  “We’d handle everything. Would you rather risk having her see you killed? Or they might torture her if they thought it would do them any good. You know, their methods can be quite effective. You might have a more difficult time explaining to them that you simply choose not to use your skills for a dirty business like spying.”

  Victor’s head hurt from the prolonged contact with Lippitt. His entire body ached and throbbed with exhaustion. “What if I decide to take my chances?” He no longer made any effort to mask his anxiety.

  “I’m afraid that would put us in a difficult position,” Mr. Lippitt said slowly, for the first time looking away from Victor. “You see, if you weren’t working for us, we’d have no way of being certain you weren’t working for them. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill your wife or anybody else if it would force you over to their side.” Lippitt’s eyes hardened, “Or they simply might offer you a million dollars. Sometimes it’s as easy as that.”

  Victor flushed. “Either way, then you’d have to stop me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m trapped.”

  “I’m afraid so, Mr. Rafferty. I’m sorry that it has to be this way.”

  Victor rubbed his sweating palms against his shirt. He was seized with a sudden, almost overwhelming desire to strike out, to smash his fist into the white face that looked as if it would tear like paper. He clenched his fists, but his arms dropped back to his sides in a gesture of resignation. Lippitt was right; on a planet covered with nations strangling on their own words of deceit and treachery, he was the ultimate weapon. He could determine truth, and he sensed that absolute truth and certainty would be a most dangerous possession in the hands of the wrong men. Had Hitler known the frailties of the men he fought, he would have ruled the world. On the other hand, a telepath could have prevented Pearl Harbor.