Pstalemate

by Lester Del Rey

  He cut the thought off, swearing at his mind. Damn it, was he still kidding himself that he might have precognition?

  But his last thought was a certainty that there would be no nightmares and no voices calling his name. In that, he was right, though he had a dull feeling of something reaching toward his mind, something with ideas that had no business in his head. He turned over, half waking, and it seemed to go away.

  The next morning began well enough. Lawson called and seemed pleased at Harry's report. Galloway made what seemed to be a sincere inquiry about his health. And Tina Hillery wanted to kid him about the column in the Voice. Well, he'd laced into her once about her astrology craze, and turnabout was only fair. Besides, she always had a supply of good-natured gossip about the doings of various Primates. He was chuckling when he finally hung up the phone.

  But tension began to build up over his second cup of coffee. He tried to shake it off. but his rationality was at a low ebb. Apparently, once the mind had any evidence it could perform miracles, it refused to give up the idea and started trying to prove itself. Now if anything unpleasant developed, it could claim more proof; if nothing happened, it could simply wait until something did. No wonder it was so hard to shake the faith of less rational kooks. Next he'd be switching from coffee to tea so he could read the leaves!

  Something suddenly nagged at his mind then. Tea... But he couldn't trace the idea and went back to general worrying.

  He was hovering over the phone when it rang again, and he caught it at the first sound. But there was no risk of anticipating the caller's identity; the voice was snapping out as he got the receiver to his ear.

  "Henry? Charles Grimes here. What the devil's all this stuff my office sent over? They've got your name on some piece about fortune-telling. We can sue 'em for things like that. Or can we?"

  "I'm afraid not, Uncle Charles." There was no blood relationship, but the courtesy title had become a habit. "Galloway's report was accurate enough as far as it went. Anyhow, there's no harm—"

  "No harm? No harm!" Grimes was in an obvious raging tizzy. Then his voice dropped as if he were exerting some tremendous control over it. "All right, Henry. All right. I guess you would feel that way. You wouldn't know. But I think you'd better get up here. And don't be all day about it! We've got some talking to do."

  "Half an hour," Harry agreed, and hung up before he could hear the certain protest against any delay at all. He poured himself another coffee and took it to the bathroom with him. He had no intention of appearing before Grimes' ward, Ellen Palermo, with a stubble of beard, and besides, a little waiting might remind the old man that he couldn't issue imperious orders any longer.

  During all the twenty years Harry could remember, Grimes had been the voice of authority. It had been Grimes who told a frightened amnesiac boy the ugly facts of his life, Grimes who had picked his schools and for a time even guided his thoughts. But it had never been a peaceful relationship. Even during his youthful period of rebellion against his elders, Harry had usually realized that the old man did his honest duty as he saw it; but something about him grated on Harry's nerves, and he was sure the reverse was true. Since the big battle over Harry's switch from law to engineering, they had seen as little as possible of each other.

  Unfortunately, it had worked out that he also saw less of Ellen. She'd been a ward of Grimes since before Harry was left to the old man, but both had been away at school most of the time until Harry came back from the Army. Then he'd found the saucy and plaguing girl-child changed into an amazingly attractive woman. She could never be called beautiful; but there was a vividness to her brunette looks, and her occasional smile had hit him hard at first. For a little time, Harry had thought it was mutual.

  Then she had pulled back into a shell. Somehow, she was always too busy to see him, except in chance meetings or when he came to see Grimes. He was sure there was no other man, and she didn't seem to dislike him; but there was a strain between them, obviously. He blamed that on the influence of Grimes, though he had no evidence of his suspicions.

  Still, sometimes when he called on the old lawyer, he was able to wangle a dinner date from her, and since this might be one of those times, he meant to look his best.

  Grimes owned the building where Harry lived. He occupied a large apartment on the top floor, serviced by a private elevator. He still maintained a law office in the financial district but spent most of his time at home, where Ellen had gradually taken over most of the work as his secretary.

  Grimes answered the buzzer himself, and Harry saw that this didn't seem to be one of the lucky times; there was no sign of the girl. But the lawyer gave him no time to inquire. "You took long enough!"

  Harry started to make an automatic crack and then killed it. The old man didn't look well. His short figure was thinner than ever, and the skin of his face was like stretched parchment. Only his wild shock of gray hair was normal, and even that was receding now, Harry noticed for the first time.

  "Sorry, Uncle Charles," he said.

  Grimes sniffed, but seemed somewhat relieved at even the token apology. He led the way into his office and gestured to a chair beside the desk. For a moment after he took his own seat, he seemed uncertain. He pawed at the clipping from the Voice, then shoved it away. His thin lips tightened. Then he fished a yellowed slip of paper from one drawer and handed it to Harry.

  "Your mother and her partner," he said. "They had the greatest act of stage mentalism ever seen. That was taken when she announced she was quitting to marry your father. I once hoped—but that's no business of yours."

  Harry had never seen a picture of bis mother. He studied the old clipping from some magazine, surprised that he could find no emotion at seeing this first real evidence of her existence. It was only a rather pretty woman's image to him. It related to the ten years completely lost to his memories and emotions, not to what had become his real life. His eyes dropped to the caption: "Palermo and Lavalle to Fold!"

  "Palermo!" he exclaimed.

  Grimes nodded. "Nick Palermo—Ellen's father and the best friend I ever had. He died in a home for the criminally insane—sent there for having strangled a wife he deeply loved! Don't tell me there's no harm in all this extrasensory rigmarole!"

  "But theirs was stage mentalism," Harry protested. "It has nothing to do with—"

  "The hell it doesn't!" Grimes' hands were shaking as he snatched the picture back and shoved it into the drawer. There were two bright spots of red on his pale cheeks. "They believed in it. That's the devilish danger of the stuff —it's like opium! At first, you just play with it—and then it owns you. Even I began to believe in it. They started making a life around it. Palermo and Bronson, and then they found others. I was just a lawyer acting as their investment adviser at first. Then they had a little colony. And then—then it was gone. Ugly, ugly! And I came back here with two kids to keep in trust and protect."

  He shoved back the chair and stood beside the desk, bent so that his hands could grasp the edge until the knuckles were white. "No harm? Henry, your mother had a vision of what was going to happen. But did it save her? It did not! Because she had to have it happen that way or it meant her vision was wrong—and she cared more about her so-called powers than anything else. She made it happen the way she saw it She had to! And if you start fooling with this stuff..."

  Harry had been listening with a mixture of shock at the revelations and a growing sympathy for Grimes' obvious disturbance. But the last sentence snapped him out of it, reminding him that Grimes had once had a reputation as a trial lawyer, where he could sway jurors with emotional asides that somehow always came back to the point he wanted to make.

  "I wasn't fooling with anything," he began.

  "And you're not going to fool with anything!" Grimes jerked the chair back and perched on it again, his black eyes snapping at Harry. "You'll have nothing—absolutely nothing—to do further with any fortune-telling, extrasensory nonsense, or whatever. No gambling. No display for any st
upid reporters. And no contact with this Lawson. Oh, I know him. He was a fine physician once—before he took up kookery. Now he's no fit person for you to associate with."

  "Or?"

  "Or you'll find yourself cut off without another penny from the trust." Grimes grinned thinly, a tightening of his lips that displayed clenched teeth. "You know damned well that I control every cent for you—to do as I choose, unless and until I relinquish control or die. I can cut you off, and don't you think I can't. Oh, you might get a court order to have it turned over to you—but I could stall it off for years. Years! You either give me your promise to drop this nonsense immediately—or you'll be too busy trying to keep bread in your mouth to have any time left for it."

  "Am I supposed to let you pick all my friends from now on?" Harry asked with elaborate calm. He could feel the blood rushing angrily to his face while his stomach was cold and hard, but he tried to keep his voice level.

  "Reject friends you shouldn't have, yes." The grin widened. "Oh, not your so-fast friend Greenwald. You'll have to reject him yourself, unless he has enough to pay his way back from Europe. So far, you've drawn a sizable fortune for that toy engine of yours and for Greenwald to waste promoting it. I've never said a word—"

  "You've said a lot of words on that!"

  "I've never said a word—other than some good advice—to prevent your playing inventor. But if yon go against me now, that gets cut off, too. Henry, I won't have you turn out like Ellen!"

  "What happened to Ellen?" Harry asked quickly.

  "Never mind. She left—months ago. And don't go trying to find her. She's another person I won't have you seeing!"

  "So you bullied your little slave once too often," Harry guessed. "A great job our fathers did in picking a guardian for us. Though I suppose they didn't know how far you'd go in playing the dictator."

  Grimes leaned forward, his mouth opening. Then he forced himself back, as if swallowing something that was bitter to his taste. "Your father knew, young man. He was rational enough for a while after—after what happened. It was his idea then that you were never to have anything to do with these extrasensory affairs. I'm only following my promise to him. I promised—and I keep my word."

  "You've got his instructions in writing, I suppose," Harry suggested.

  "No." Suddenly Grimes seemed to relax, and his head nodded faintly. His smile was almost approving. "The point is yours. But my point is that I can and will cut you off unless you obey my wishes on this. Well?"

  "You," Harry told him, "can go to hell!"

  Grimes nodded again. "I'm quite aware of that from long experience. Unfortunately, the road may be even easier for you ... You can let yourself out, Henry."

  Harry's first reaction barely lasted until he reached his apartment. The trouble was that he really had no wish to disobey. He had neither liking nor experience for gambling—even the stock market left him completely bored. He hadn't the faintest idea of how to go about approaching the real psi cultists. There was no reason for him to seek the company of Dr. Lawson, however kind the man might have been after the initial trouble. And he didn't know where Ellen might be. It seemed that he might well wind up following Grimes' instructions for lack of ability to do otherwise.

  Harry was also intelligent enough to have a fair idea of what a poor prospect he would be to support himself. True, he had a valid degree in engineering, but having done nothing with it since graduation would look strange to any potential employer. Even if he got a job, he probably would not be able to hold it; he'd never developed the work habits needed for gainful employment. He could work like a fool at something he wanted to do, but he doubted that he could keep his mind on anything routine.

  He had no need to check his bank balance. It had grown during his time in the Army, but most of the reserve had disappeared when he decided to send Sid to Europe. He might be able to live for six months on what was left—provided no emergency came up.

  The emergency had already come, he found on opening his mail. There was a letter from Greenwald asking for additional money.

  There was also a raft of crank mail from people who had seen Galloway's column and been smart enough to look for his address in the phone book. He plowed through a few of the pitiful, irrational ravings and barely scanned the rest. Were there really that many lonely, ineffectual people whose only hope lay in finding miracles within themselves? Did they have to have God-like powers to prove that they were not merely animals, as they seemed to fear?

  Only one letter puzzled him. The writer had circled part of the column and neatly inked the margin with a comment. It said simply: "God have mercy on you, Mr. Bronson." It was signed: "A fellow victim."

  It might have been another crank note, except for what happened as he read it. There was a sudden cry in a woman's voice in his head and a feeling of tears on his face. A vague terror reached him, to be quelled almost instantly. Faintly, words seemed to form. "Help us. Oh, God, help us both. Don't let them get us!"

  Then it was gone. His fingers, touching his face, found no trace of the tears he had felt so distinctly.

  Psychic—or psychotic? He shook his head. Damn Grimes! The man had obviously been trying to suggest that the pursuit of the first state created the second. Hearing imaginary voices in his head would be plainly psychotic, seeming to prove the point. Yet the idea simply didn't agree with the number of mediums who died at advanced ages with no greater degree of insanity than they'd had initially. Nettie consulted an old crone who seemed to believe she could foresee the future part of the time, and her only obvious psychosis lay in her excessive need for alcohol.

  Still, he was aware that he was developing a nagging feeling that he might be able to exercise powers beyond the normal, and that fitted with Grimes' idea that the need for the psychic became an obsession. How much evidence did he have, one way or another?

  He could dismiss the calling of the cards; they could have been stacked somehow, or it could have been a miracle of coincidence, but he had no way of evaluating it. There had been the awareness of the identity of his callers; that could be explained, perhaps, but the explanations required too many wild speculations. He'd had a hunch that today would bring trouble; most days did, though it hadn't been as bad as he'd expected; anyhow, he should have known that Grimes would be upset by the publicity, whatever the man's reasons.

  It all added up to nothing, one way or the other. So the only sane and rational thing was to put it to a test where he couldn't know the answer but would be interested enough in the outcome to make his mind work. Then, if he got the right answer, he'd have reason to check further; if he drew a blank, he could forget the whole thing.

  He knew the question: Where was Ellen Palermo? There were probably ways of tracing her, but why bother if he could find the answer by hunch?

  He pictured her in his mind, trying to fill in a background that would offer a clue. Or a number, a street sign, some building. Then he tried turning in the chair, seeking to find a direction that seemed right.

  After fifteen minutes, he gave up. The trouble was not that nothing came—rather, it was that he could force backgrounds, numbers, directions, and words, but there was no meaning or pattern to it. His head had begun to ache with the strain. He made himself a fresh pot of coffee—he was drinking too much coffee, of course—and took a couple of aspirins. His head still felt strange, as if he'd sprained a brain cell or two, but the pain faded.

  Then he got out a big map of the city and spread it on the floor. With his eyes closed, he began crawling about on it, trying to use a pencil like a dowsing rod. His first mark was in the middle of the Hudson River, and for a moment he had a horrible reaction to that. Then he conquered his alarm and tried again. Eventually, he had most of the map spotted with marks that were obviously randomized around a central point. As a dowser, it seemed, he was a total failure.

  With a mixture of relief and a strange reluctance, he put the map away. So he wasn't psychic. He'd simply had a rush of rubbish to the head.
And the longer he stayed holed up here, the worse it would get.

  He found his keys finally on the sideboard where Lawson must have dropped them, slipped on a light coat, and took the elevator down to the garage. The car had been washed free of the grime and salt from the roads, and he saw that the tank was full of gas. In some ways, at least, Phil Lawson was an admirable man; no one with a respect for machinery could be all bad.

  As he wheeled the Citroën out onto the street, he found that most of the snow and ice were already gone. The weather had turned clear and much wanner. With no particular object in mind, he headed south, figuring on taking the Lincoln Tunnel out to New Jersey and perhaps dropping by the workshop to see if the new casting he'd ordered had been delivered.

  Within the first ten blocks of driving, he was sure that the tan Volkswagen in his rearview mirror was following him. He picked the next eastbound street and crossed it to Broadway, with the tan car still behind him. Damn it, he should have guessed that Grimes would be thorough enough to have all his movements followed until Harry promised to obey the latest dicta. While there was no reason to conceal his visit to his shop, he didn't at all fancy the idea of being spied on.

  Harry moved over to Ninth Avenue and headed down until he was in the maze of the Village. There he cruised at random for perhaps ten minutes. The other car stayed with him, and he began to realize that he had no clear idea of how to shake it.

  Abruptly, he braked and swung right. He took a sharp left, then another right. In the middle of a block, he turned into an alley that he hadn't known was there and followed it without hesitation to what seemed a dead end. At the last minute, a side alley showed, and he managed to turn left into it. A few minutes later, he was heading for an entrance to the West Side Highway, Northbound. There was no sign of his follower.