But Vena dropped down onto one knee and looked into SKitty’s eyes. “I know you’re a telepath, SKitty,” she said, in Terran. “Can you project to anyone but Dick? Could you project into our prisoner’s mind? Put your voice in his head?”
SKitty turned her head to look up at Dick. :Walls,: she complained. :Dick has no walls for SKitty.:
“She says he’s got barriers,” Dick interpreted. “I understand that most nontelepathic people have and it’s just an accident that the two of us are compatible.”
“I may be able to change that,” Vena replied, with a tight smile, as she got to her feet. “SKitty, I’m going to do some things to this prisoner, and I want you to tell me when the barriers are gone.” She turned to a cabinet and unlocked it; inside were hypospray vials, and she selected one. “We’ve been cooperating with the Lacu’un Healers; putting together drugs we’ve been developing for the Lacu’un,” she continued, “There are hypnotics that are proven to lower telepathic barriers in humans, and I have a few that may do the same for the Lacu’un. If they don’t kill him, that is.” She raised an eyebrow at Dick. “You can see why we didn’t want to test them even on volunteers.”
“But if the drugs kill him—” Dick gulped.
“Then we save the Lacu’ara the cost of an execution, and we apologize that the prisoner expired from fear,” she replied smoothly. Dick gulped again; this was a ruthless side of Vena he’d had no notion existed!
She placed the first hypo against the side of the prisoner’s neck; the device hissed as it discharged its contents, and the prisoner’s eyes widened with fear.
An hour later, there were only two vials left in the cabinet; Vena had administered all the rest, and their antidotes, with sublime disregard for the strain this was probably putting on the prisoner’s body. The effects of each had been duly noted, but none of them produced the desired effect of lowering the barriers nontelepaths had against telepathic intrusion.
Vena picked up the first of the last two, and sighed. “If one of these doesn’t work, I’ll have to make a decision about giving him to the locals,” she said with what sounded like disappointment. “I’d really rather not do that.”
Dick didn’t ask why, but one of the two Marines in the room with them must have seen the question in his eyes. “If the Ambassador turns this fellow over to them, they’ll execute him, and that might be enough to send cold war hostilities into a real blaze,” the young lieutenant muttered as Vena administered the hypo. “And the word from the Palace is that the other side is as advanced in atomic physics as our lot is. In other words, these are religious fanatics with a nuclear arsenal.”
Dick winced; the Terrans would be safe enough in a nuclear exchange, and so would the bulk of city-dwellers, for the Lacu’un had mastered force-shield technology. But in a nuclear exchange there were always accidents and as yet it wasn’t possible to encase anything bigger than a city in a shield; he’d seen enough blasted lands never to wish a nuc-war on anyone, and certainly not on the decent folk here.
SKitty watched the prisoner as she would a mouse; his eyes unfocused when the drug took hold, and this time, she meowed with pleasure. It didn’t take Dick’s translation for Vena to know that the prisoner’s telepathic barriers to SKitty’s probing thoughts were gone.
“Excellent!” she exclaimed with relief. “All right, little one—we’re going to leave the room until you send one of the kittens to come get us. Let him think we’ve lost interest in him for the moment, then get into his head and convince him that he is a very, very bad kitten and you are his mother and you’re going to punish him unless he says he’s sorry and he won’t do it again. Make him think that you are so angry that you might kill him if he can’t understand how bad he’s been. In fact, any of you cats that can get into his head should do that. Then make him promise that he’ll always obey everything you tell him to, and don’t let up the pressure until he does.”
SKitty looked at Vena as if she thought the human had gone crazy, then sighed. :Stupid,: she told Dick privately. :But okay. I do.:
Dick was as baffled as SKitty was, as he followed Vena out into the hall, leaving the cats with the prisoner. “Just what is that going to accomplish?” he demanded.
She chuckled. “I rather doubt he’s ever heard anyone speak in his mind before,” she pointed out. “Not even his god.”
Now Dick saw exactly what she’d had in mind—and stifled his bark of laughter. “He’s going to be certain SKitty’s more powerful than his god if she can do that—and if she treats him like a naughty child rather than an enemy to be destroyed—”
“Exactly,” Vena said with satisfaction. “This is what Lieutenant Reynard wanted me to try, though we thought we’d have to add halucinogens and a VR headset, rather than getting right directly into his head. My problem was finding a way to tell her to act like an all-powerful, rebuking god in a way she’d understand. In the drugged state he’s in now, he’ll accept whatever happens as the truth.”
“So he won’t threaten the cats anymore—but then what?” Dick asked.
“According to Reynard, the worst that will happen is that he’ll be convinced that this new god of his enemies is a lot more powerful and real than his own, and that’s the story he’ll take back home.”
“And the best?” Dick inquired.
She shrugged. “He converts.”
“Just what will that accomplish?”
She paused, and licked her lips unconsciously. “We ran some simulations, based on what we’ve learned about Lacu’un psychology and projecting the rest from history. Historically, the most fanatic followers of a new religion are the converts who were just as fanatical in their former religion. In either case, imagine the reaction when he returns home, which he will, and miraculously, because we’ll take a stealthed flitter and drop him over the border while he’s drugged and unconscious. He’ll probably figure out that we brought him, but there won’t be any sign of how. Imagine what his superiors will think?”
The Marine lieutenant standing diffidently at her elbow cleared his throat. “Actually, you don’t have to guess,” he said respectfully. “As the Ambassador mentioned, we’ve been running a psych-profiles for possible contingencies, and they agree with her educated assessment. No matter what, the fanatics will be too frightened of the power of this new ‘god’ to hazard either a war or another assassination attempt. And if we send back a convert—there’s a seventy-four point three percent chance he’ll end up starting his own crusade, or even a holy war within their culture. No matter what, they cease to be a problem.”
“Now that,” Dick replied with feeling, “Is really a better mousetrap!”
The Last of the Season
This is a very old story, dating back at least ten years. Published in a short-lived magazine called American Fantasy, I doubt that many people had a chance to see it. It was old enough that I felt it needed a bit of rewriting, so although the general plot is the same, it’s undergone a pretty extensive change.
They said on TV that her name was Molly, but Jim already knew that. They also said that she was eight years old, but she didn’t look eight, more like six; didn’t look old enough to be in school, even. She didn’t look anything like the picture they’d put up on the screen, either. The picture was at least a year old, and done by some cut-rate outfit for her school. Her hair was shorter, her face rounder, her expression so stiff she looked like a kid-dummy. There was nothing like the lively spark in her eyes, or the naughty smile she’d worn this afternoon. The kid in the picture was so clean she squeaked; where was the sticky popsicle residue on her face and hands, the dirt-smudges on her knees?
Jim lost interest as soon as the station cut away to the national news, and turned the set off.
The remote-controlled TV was the one luxury in his beige box of an apartment. His carpet was the cheapest possible brown industrial crap, the curtains on the picture-window a drab, stiff, cheap polyester stuff, backed with even cheaper vinyl that was seamed
with cracks after less than a year. He had one chair (Salvation Army, brown corduroy), one lamp (imitation brass, from K-mart), one vinyl sofa (bright orange, St. Vincent de Paul) that was hard and uncomfortable, and one coffee-table (imitation Spanish, Goodwill) where the fancy color TV sat, like a king on a peasant’s crude bench.
In the bedroom, just beyond the closed door, was his bedroom, no better furnished than the living-room. He stored his clothing in odd chests of folded cardboard, with a clamp-lamp attached to the cardboard table by the king-sized bed. Like the TV, the bed was top-of-the-line, with a satin bedspread. On that bed, sprawled over the royal blue satin, was Molly.
Jim rose, slowly and silently, and tiptoed across the carpet to the bedroom door, cracking it open just an inch or so, peering inside. She looked like a Norman Rockwell picture, lying on her side, so pale against the dark, vivid fabric, her red corduroy jumper rumpled across her stomach where she clutched her teddy bear with one arm. She was still out of it, sleeping off the little knock on the skull he’d given her. Either that, or she was still under the whiff of ether that had followed. When he was close to her, he could still smell the banana-scent of her popsicle, and see a sticky trace of syrup around her lips. The light from the door caught in the eyes of her teddy bear, and made them shine with a feral, red gleam.
She’d been easy, easy—so trusting, especially after all the contact he’d had with her for the past three weeks. He’d had his eye on two or three of the kids at Kennedy Grade School, but she’d been the one he’d really wanted; like the big TV, she was top-of-the-line, and any of the others would have been a disappointment. She was perfect, prime material, best of the season. Those big, chocolate-brown eyes, the golden-brown hair cut in a sweet page-boy, the round dolly-face—she couldn’t have been any better.
He savored the moment, watching her at a distance, greedily studying her at his leisure, knowing that he had her all to himself and no one could interfere.
She’d been one of the last kids to leave the school on this warm, golden afternoon—the rest had scattered on down the streets, chasing the fallen leaves by the time she came out. He’d been loitering, waiting to see if he’d missed her, if someone had picked her up after school, or if she’d had a dentist appointment or something—but no one would ever give a second look at the ice-cream man loitering outside a grade school. He looked like what everybody expected, a man obviously trying to squeeze every last dime out of the rug-rats that he could.
The pattern while he’d had this area staked out was that Molly only had ice-cream money about a third of the time. He’d set her up so carefully—if she came out of the school alone, and started to pass the truck with a wistful look in her eyes, he’d made a big production out of looking around for other kids, then signalling her to come over. The first couple of times, she’d shaken her head and run off, but after she’d bought cones from him a time or two, he wasn’t a stranger, and to her mind, was no longer in the catagory of people she shouldn’t talk to. Then she responded, and he had given her a broken popsicle in her favorite flavor of banana. “Do me a favor and eat this, all right?” he’d said, in his kindest voice. “I can’t sell a broken popsicle, and I’d hate for it to go to waste.” Then he’d lowered his voice to a whisper and bent over her. “But don’t tell the other kids, okay? Let’s just keep it a secret.”
She nodded, gleefully, and ran off. After that he had no trouble getting her to come over to the truck; after all, why should she be afraid of the friend who gave her ice cream for free, and only asked that she keep it a secret?
Today she’d had money, though, and from the sly gleam in her eyes he would bet she’d filched it from her momma’s purse this morning. He’d laid out choices for her like a servant laying out feast-choices for a princess, and she’d sparkled at him, loving the attention as much as the treat.
She’d dawdled over her choice, her teddy bear clutched under one arm, a toy so much a part of her that it could have been another limb. That indecision bought time for the other kids to clear out of the way, and all the teachers to get to their cars and putt out of the parking-lot. His play-acting paid off handsomely, especially after he’d nodded at the truck and winked. She’d wolfed down her cone, and he gave her another broken popsicle; she lingered on, sucking on the yellow ice in a way that made his groin tighten with anticipation. He’d asked her ingenuous questions about her school and her teacher, and she chattered amiably with him between slurps.
Then she’d turned to go at the perfect moment, with not a child, a car, or a teacher in sight. He reached for the sock full of sand inside the freezer-door, and in one, smooth move, gave her a little tap in just the right place.
He caught her before she hit the ground. Then it was into the special side of the ice-cream truck with her; the side not hooked up to the freezer-unit, with ventilation holes bored through the walls in places where no one would find them. He gave her a whiff of ether on a rag, just in case, to make sure she stayed under, then he slid her limp body into the cardboard carton he kept on that side, just in case somebody wanted to look inside. He closed and latched the door, and was back in the driver’s seat before two minutes were up, with still no sign of man nor beast. Luck, luck, all the way.
Luck, or pure genius. He couldn’t lose; he was invulnerable.
Funny how she’d kept a grip on that toy, though. But that was luck, too; if she’d left it there—
Well, he might have forgotten she’d had it. Then somebody would have found it, and someone might have remembered her standing at the ice-cream truck with it beside her.
But it had all gone smoothly, perfectly planned, perfectly executed, ending with a drive through the warm September afternoon, bells tinkling slightly out-of-tune, no different from any other ice-cream man out for the last scores of the season. He’d felt supremely calm and in control of everything the moment he was in his seat; no one would ever suspect him, he’d been a fixture since the beginning of school. Who ever sees the ice-cream man? He was as much a part of the landscape as the fire-hydrant he generally stopped beside.
They’d ask the kids of course, now that Molly was officially missing—and they’d say the same stupid thing they always did. “Did you see any strangers?” they’d ask. “Any strange cars hanging around? Anyone you didn’t recognize?”
Stupid; they were just stupid. He was the smart one. The kids would answer just like they always did, they’d say no, they hadn’t seen any strangers.
No, he wasn’t a stranger, he was the ice-cream man. The kids saw him today, and they’d see him tomorrow, he’d make sure of that. He’d be on his route for the next week at least, unless there was a cold snap. He knew how cops thought, and if he disappeared, they might look for him. No way was he going to break his pattern. Eventually the cops would question him—not tomorrow, but probably the day after that. He’d tell them he had seen the little girl, that she’d bought a cone from him. He’d cover his tracks there, since the other kids would probably remember that she’d been at the truck. But he’d shrug helplessly, and say that she hadn’t been on the street when he drove off. He’d keep strictly to the truth, just not all the truth.
Now Molly was all his, and no one would take her away from him until he was done with her.
He drove home, stopping to sell cones when kids flagged him down, taking his time. It wouldn’t do to break his pattern. He took out the box that held Molly and brought it upstairs, then made two more trips, for the leftover frozen treats, all in boxes just like the one that held Molly. The neighbors were used to this; it was another part of his routine. He was the invisible man; old Jim always brings in the leftovers and puts ’em in his freezer overnight, it’s cheaper than running the truck-freezer overnight.
He knew what they said about him. That Jim was a good guy—kept to himself mostly, but when it was really hot or he had too much left over to fit in his freezer, he’d pass out freebies. A free ice-cream bar was appreciated in this neighborhood, where there wasn’t a lot
of money to spare for treats. Yeah, Jim was real quiet, but okay, never gave any trouble to anybody.
If the cops went so far as to look into his background, they wouldn’t find anything. He ran a freelance ice-cream route in the summer and took odd jobs in the winter; there was no record of his ever getting into trouble.
Of course there was no record. He was smart. Nobody had ever caught him, not when he set fires as a kid, not when he prowled the back alleys looking for stray dogs and cats, and not later, when he went on to the targets he really wanted. He was careful. When he first started on kids, he picked the ones nobody would miss. And he kept up with the literature; he knew everything the cops would look for.
Jim’s apartment was a corner-unit, under the roof. There was nobody above him, the old man under him was stone-deaf, the guy on one side was a stoner on the night-shift, and the couple on the other side kept their music blasting so loud it was a wonder that they weren’t deaf. Nobody would ever hear a thing.
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