by Kris Neville
The FBI man stopped, embarrassed. “She’s pregnant.”
Pity again, that he did not want to feel. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” the FBI man said, concern suddenly alive in his voice with the hope of release. “How do you know eye color’s the signal? How can you be sure? I want you to explain it to me. My wife—I mean, she knows about it, and . . .”
Howard Wilson wanted to say something about security regulations, but instead he merely nodded.
“I shouldn’t have told her,” the FBI mail said.
Howard Wilson shrugged.
“But why are you so sure eye color’s the signal?”
Howard Wilson said, “The chances are a thousand to one, maybe a hundred times that, in favor of any given baby being normal. It won’t do any good to worry.”
“But you’re sure eye color is right?”
“No,” Howard Wilson said. “All we know is that the incidence of mutation is low, indicating a recessive gene. Since it’s consistent, it must be the same gene. We hope it’s connected to some exterior hereditary feature. Skin color, for instance, is connected with susceptibility to malaria and tuberculosis; but on the other hand, the recessive that can be mutated to cause hemophilia doesn’t seem to be linked to any observable characteristic. Too few cases have been investigated to say definitely that eye color is the indication. It could just be coincidence, so far.”
Hurt, the FBI man said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” Howard Wilson said less sharply. He wanted to say something helpful, but he was exhausted, and the almost-thought was buzzing again in his telepathic sense. “Don’t worry, that’s all I can say. Don’t worry. It won’t do any good to worry about it.”
Upon leaving the Federal Building, as he stepped into the sunshine of the street, he met his fellow telepath.
“Hey, Bob!”
Robert Edd turned. His face was drawn and his eyes were dull, as if he had been a long time without sleep. “Oh, Wilson.”
Staring into his face, Howard Wilson felt sudden fear. “What’s wrong?”
“Here. Read this.” Robert Edd handed across a sheaf of papers.
Howard Wilson took them. His mouth was dry. “Listen, Bob, I’ve . . . that is . . . Have you noticed anything wrong? I’ve had an awful headache since about noon, and I keep getting blurred thoughts that I can’t shut out, and . . . it hurts; my telepathic organ . . .”
“Don’t think to me!” Robert Edd snapped when Howard Wilson started to abandon speech.
“OK, OK, if you want it this way,” Howard Wilson said. “But listen, Bob, I’m scared as hell. What do you think causes it?” He could not bring himself to ask: Am I about to die? He was afraid to find out the answer.
Robert Edd had perspiration on his upper lip. He opened his mouth to speak.
Howard Wilson felt the high, shrill, unpleasant buzzing again: sharper, more menacing now, like the pang of a toothache. It made him shudder even in the heat. And Robert Edd’s eyes were suddenly no longer dull; had this piercing buzz reached him too?
“My God,” Robert Edd whispered. “No time to talk. Phone me later.” He turned and half ran up the stairs.
“Wait!” Howard Wilson called. But Robert Edd had already disappeared. Howard Wilson stared after him indecisively. Then he looked down at the sheaf of papers. An autopsy report. He breathed easier: it concerned the new mutants. He had been afraid . . . No, he did not want to talk to Robert Edd just now. He didn’t feel like running down another, probably false, lead this afternoon.
He crossed to his car, and sitting behind the wheel, he scanned the report listlessly.
The birth had been typical. As always, the mother had died—this time in spite of a Caesarian section. The mutant, as usual, gave every indication of being premature—as if the normal gestation period had been too short.
It had died within minutes of the mother. The autopsy showed that its heart was slightly larger than normal, containing an extra compartment; the gonads were undescended, which would probably have resulted in sterility if the creature had reached maturity; the adrenal cortex was completely separated and displaced backward on the kidney; the appendix was missing, and several other vestigial organs atrophied; the glands, notably the pituitary and thyroid were considerably extended; there was some rearrangement of other organs, and the stomach was much smaller and more heavily lined than normal.
There seemed to be a tiny, extra (perhaps potentially telepathic) brain segment between the medulla oblongata and the spinal column proper, and the two halves of the brain were more nearly joined. The nervous system was quite complex. The bone structure had shortened; the normal number of ribs diminished by two. And the underskin, heavy with fatty stored food deposits, practically concentrated body sugar. The body temperature had been abnormally low.
When he finished with the report, he leaned back and closed his eyes. He felt a moment of kinship with the poor dead thing. Then he felt vaguely uneasy. He ran his tongue over dry lips. Why had Robert Edd wanted him to read the report?
He started to get out of the car.
Suddenly the headache was worse, and he felt listless. His mind was overburdened with a sense of futility. Quietly, from a thousand hospitals, the reports were coming in. What could anyone do about it?
Even if eye color proved to be linked to the infected genes—could the government prevent the breeding of the suspects? What would happen when the government announced the mutant wave? Might that not be the international spark? Daily the balance became more uncertain, and critical Europe wavered in loyalty, needing only a push into confusion for which, confidently, the Stalinists waited. Anti-Bomb hysteria could mushroom over night as world citizens seeking an explanation, even as rulers, pointed to America’s recent Alaska tests.
He was all at once disgusted with humanity.
But even as the disgust came, there came also the kinship. Even as he wanted to say, Their battles are not my battles, he knew that they were.
For once in Italy on one of the quiet missions, this time to assassinate a key figure and culminate a Titoist break with Moscow—a mission that, through miscalculation, failed—he had met one of his kind in opposition, and as he faced the alien telepath, he knew no common ties with him. They were from different worlds, human worlds, to which they had somehow, beyond their intentions, become committed. Howard Wilson had killed the alien telepath, and he could not feel remorse; for the telepath had been religiously certain of destiny, a certainty which, for Howard Wilson, was presumptuous and frighteningly dangerous.
To hell with it, he thought. I’m going to die.
It was in words at last.
I’m going to die, he thought sadly. He thought about a warm spring night when he was in high school, and he remembered a fish fry when he was six years old. What does anything matter? he thought. I wonder how soon it will be? He wanted to cry. He hated the thing on his forehead that had begun to pain. How soon? The doctor had said, “The pain will be toward the end.”
He wanted to be alone with his black despair.
He started the motor. He shifted the gears.
Slowly he drove back the way he had come. Why must I and those poor dead things being born daily be persecuted by the seeds of our difference? he thought. It isn’t fair.
At the city limits, he felt wave after wave of peace and strength and power and satisfaction. He stared fascinated at the cemetery. And suddenly death seemed almost pleasant. To rest in the cool, sweet earth . . .
His telepathic organ quivered. There was no longer pain, but increasing awareness. He frowned again, almost . . . what? The no longer pain whisked away and was gone. In its wake came new restfulness; he felt calmer than he had all day.
As he was getting out of his car before his house, he felt thoughts flow upon his mind and twist away before he could trap them.
His hands were moist. He half ran to the front room. He had to phone Robert Edd. He suddenly realized the significance of the autopsy
report. The phone was ringing.
“Wilson? Wilson, you all right?” the voice asked when he picked up the receiver.
“I’m all right,” he said.
“Thank God! This is Kenny at the office. Listen. Robert Edd is dead. He dropped dead right at the door just after you left.”
“. . . no,” Howard Wilson said dully.
“And we just got a teletype. Half the other telepaths have died in the last twenty-four hours.”
The phone was cold in Howard Wilson’s hand.
“Sit tight. I’m bringing a doctor right over to examine you. Don’t move.”
“I won’t,” he said. His forehead was throbbing. “Listen, Kenny, for God’s sake, listen!”
Kenny had hung up.
Howard Wilson rattled the receiver hook. “Operator! Operator!” he cried. His hands were shaking desperately.
His head buzzed shriller and shriller, and suddenly he was listening, terrified, to thoughts he did not want to hear. Icy, cold, ruthless, alien. For which he could never feel any emotion but fear and revulsion.
He had to tell the operator before it was too late. “Operator!” he screamed. “Did you get him?” the thought came, or the meaning came, for it was not in words.
“Yes,” in answer.
“Good. We can’t afford to have them find out. Yet.”
“He had just broken through.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
Howard Wilson could feel the circuits begin to open up from around the world. Howard Wilson remembered what they looked like, remembered the only one he had seen, a female, lying in an antiseptic room in Christ’s Hospital. He began to cry in terror.
“I’m being cremated,” came a shriek of agony from India, and then the mind behind it died.
“Hello! Hello! Hello!” Howard Wilson screamed into the telephone. “I’ve stopped heart action to join you,” came the thought from England. “Listen!” Howard Wilson cried into the receiver.
“Another one’s broke through! Stop him!” came the thought.
Howard Wilson felt his brain being ripped and shredded. His eyes went blank, and his body, unfeeling, fell to the floor, and the mutant thoughts gouged and tore at his mind.
“Hello? Hello?” said the operator.
“I had to regrow three organs after that autopsy,” came a mutant thought.
“How long now?”
“Let’s count.”
And the responses began to roll in from America, Europe, Asia, minds counting one after the other.
“It won’t be long now, at the rate we’re going.”
“But we can wait many years if we must.”
Howard Wilson could feel nothing, and his consciousness was dripping away to icy laughter.
“A long time.”
“Until there are enough of us.”
“Wait . . .”
“And grow strong . . .”
“And grow numerous . . .”
“In France, China, Germany, Russia, Japan, Ireland, Italy, Australia, Brazil . . .”
“Let us rest and grow.”
Howard Wilson was almost dead now. The operator kept saying, “What did you want?”
“In our secret tombs . . .”
“In the soft, soft earth . . .”
THE TOY
Neju did not hate the God-men, but he did hate the metal demons they used to destroy his people. So he prayed to the Old Gods for aid . . .
“I hate to leave.”
“. . . But the time has come.”
“I suppose so, but momma?”
“Yes?”
“May we leave them a present?”
“What, my child, what could they want for?”
“. . . I don’t know: surely there’s something. One of my toys or something. I’d like to leave them something.”
“That’s very thoughtful, but . . .”
“Please, momma.”
“Perhaps we could.”
“They might find use for a toy, someday.”
“Might they, child? Well . . . Who knows? Perhaps they might.”
THE night, starry, cold, clear, was around them, unfriendly. The natives huddled at the edge of the clearing and stared out at the stockade. There was movement there—two sentries, abreast, threading their way in and out of shadows. The moonlight was pale and uncertain, blending away harshness, distorting, enlarging. The night was still. One of the natives let himself down until he lay flat upon the ground. A twig crackled sharply, and the other four held their breath, but the sound did not carry to the sentries. Another and another and another lay down near the first, and then all of them began to inch their way slowly through the tall swift growing grasses toward the stockade.
Their progress was slow; every few minutes they paused until their breathing returned to normal. The light, sunset shower had not softened the ground, for it was in the middle of the dry season when the rain fell sparingly. After tedious, hard gained feet, sweat stood glistening on their nearly naked bodies and grass shoots, saw edged, itched and stung their skins. Rough top roots and sharp, brutal rocks reddened them in welts and bruises.
Still they went forward, slowly, doggedly. The moon fell away toward the horizon, and the shadows unhuddled from trees and the stockade wall and stretched out on the grasses.
With clock-like precision the sentries passed along the narrow walk atop the wall. The wall was made of conje trunks, sheered of limbs, driven upright into the ground, pressed so closely together that between logs there was scarcely a chink. For the people inside the stockade, aided by a howling demon of steel that uprooted arid stripped trees effortlessly, it had been scarcely the work of a day; for the natives outside, depending for power upon their own muscles it would represent the year’s work of a village.
Each time the sentries passed the spot nearest the natives, they pressed hard to the ground and held their breath for fear some tiny, artificial movement would reveal them.
The moon hovered on the far tree tops and then vanished from sight, leaving a curtain of night, faintly star-dotted.
The five natives were at the edge of the grasses. Beyond them, to the stockade wall, there was no protection. As one they straightened and ran fleetly to the conje trunks. Under their feet, a few pebbles crunched and rattled. They pressed in against the wall, merging with the darker shadow of it, waiting for the sentries to pass. The heavy booted footfalls became louder and louder, until they came from directly overhead. The natives hugged the wall, praying silently to their alien Gods, and the footfalls slowly emptied into silence.
One of the five sent exploring hands over the wooden surface. It was rough enough for his purpose, and awkwardly, hesitantly, he began to work his way upward. Once bark peeled from under his foot and fell away, but it was caught and silenced by one of those below. He drew himself over the top of the wall with a swift, sure movement, and dropped the two feet to the walk on the other side. He crouched there, fumbling with the coil of rope at his waist.
It was a slender, moist rope, and, as he cast the end over the wall, it slithered through his hand like a line of liquid. He could hear the muffled approach of feet, and his heart beat faster. Hurriedly he expanded the slip loop in the end of the rope. He placed the loop over one of the trunks and forced it down between those on each side. It was a tight fit, and he had to jerk it savagely once. That done, he pulled it tight and slipped over the wall, looping the rope in his hand to support himself. Almost immediately the sentries were overhead.
The rope began to slip down the pole; it slipped an inch and jerked; two inches. His muscles stood out, bulging the skin. He closed his eyes.
There were voices above. The rope slipped again, and then the knot began to peel. In another moment, the rope would give way and the native would crash loudly to the ground. The foot steps began again, but only one pair now. Somewhere above in the silence a sentry was waiting. The sentry, unconcerned, lit his pipe and the watch flare made
those below catch their breaths. The rope slipped again.
In desperation, the native threw one arm over the wall. He glanced down fearfully. Then cautiously he drew himself up. In the pale star shine he could see that the sentry was not facing him. He dropped to the inside walk. The sentry half-turned.
Reluctantly, the native leaped the few intervening feet and hit him. There was a brittle snap and the native lowered the sentry gently to the walk. Then he turned, relooped the rope, pulled it more securely around the trunk. Up came the four who had been waiting below.
In a whispery hiss, he explained what had happened. The leader of the group shook his head in the darkness. “If we go inside, now,” he said, “the other will discover this one and then warn the demon before we can destroy it. We must silence the other one too.”
They nodded.
One of the group bent and removed the fallen sentry’s weapon. He turned it over and over in his hands, curiously.
“Hey! Hey!” the other sentry called, suddenly, from out of the darkness along the wall. “Hey, Ed!” Receiving no answer, he fumbled his weapon into his hand. “Hey! Ed! Answer me!”
“Too late,” the leader of the natives hissed. “He will wake the demon. Run!”
They vaulted the wall, striking the ground and scattered toward the tall grasses and the forest beyond. One dragged a broken leg painfully.
The body of Ed, the limp sentry, teetered for a moment on the walk and then slipped awkwardly over the side. It struck a wall buttress and bent over it like a horseshoe.
The other sentry rushed to the corner. One glance was enough to tell him what had happened. He grabbed the huge spotlamp at the juncture of the two walls and tripped the button. Inside the stockade a generator whined and the arc of the lamp flared its sunbright blue.
The beam was temporarily blinding, and the sentry cursed. Then his field of vision came clear, and all the details of the grassy stretch were etched sharply. He saw two running figures, each at the outer edge of the beam. He swiveled the light until it focused upon the nearest one.
It was the leader—the one with the broken leg—and he froze in the light. He did not even attempt to fall to the ground.