Collected Fiction, page 89
“No . . . damn it, Jean—it was news!”
“I’ve some typing to do. Is there anything else?”
Hatch hesitated, shook his head. Silently the girl went out. The newscaster finished his drink. There were beads of perspiration on his bronzed face. The televisor clicked twice. Hatch opened the switch.
On the screen a face swam into visibility, plump and well-shaved. “Mr. Hatch?”
“Yeah.”
“A personal message from Raymond Gerold. You are asked to make no mention in your broadcast of Doctor Manning’s arrest. Also, a bonus of two thousand dollars had been awarded you for supplying the government with important information.”
With a swift movement, Hatch turned off the televisor. He remained motionless at his desk, staring unseeingly at the wall . . .
MORE than anything else, it was the memory of the look in Jean Hill’s eyes that made Hatch decide to act. The thought of defying Gerold did not enter into his plans, but it might be possible to effect some compromise. The newscaster had influential friends. By careful wirepulling, he was able to discover that Manning was in a concentration camp near San Bernardino, some sixty miles east of Los Angeles. He was being held incommunicado, but Hatch managed to get a pass. For the rest, he trusted to luck. He was anxious to see Manning, for there were unpleasant rumors of the treatment accorded prisoners in the camps.
A note he received made him change his schedule. “They’re planning on moving Manning before you arrive. He’s to be sent by stratosphere plane to South America. You’ll never be able to find him in one of the jungle camps.” The message was unsigned, but Hatch knew that it came from a friendly guard in the camp—a man who had often, for a consideration, supplied the newscaster with information.
Hatch left Los Angeles at seven o’clock that night, instead of waiting till morning. His streamlined, supercharged roadster rocketed through Southern California like a cyclone, charging along the high-speed road that knifed from Vancouver to the Canal Zone. It was December, and grey dusk was darkening to night as Hatch turned into the private road that led to the concentration camp. He became aware of something amiss.
A siren was screaming hoarsely in the distant. Searchlights flared probingly into the skies. Hatch slowed the roadster, peering into the gloom of the avocado groves that bordered the highway. His headlights made a white patch ahead.
Then he saw the motionless figure. Brakes screamed. A man was lying there, his clothing in rags, white hair bloodstained.
Hatch sprang out of the stopped car. He went to the prone man. Blood soaked the shirt, making it cling to the gaunt, bony chest. The newscaster caught his breath; his eyes narrowed. It was Manning—and not only had he been shot, but there were unmistakable signs of torture . . .
Hatch shivered in the chill wind. He knelt beside Manning, opened the unconscious man’s shirt, and felt suddenly nauseated at sight of the open wounds. Sirens screamed, coming closer.
The dying man opened his eyes—coldly gray, with a curiously penetrating stare. In the seamed, haggard face they appeared to glow with a light of their own. Their gaze examined Hatch probingly.
Manning reached up trembling, blood-damp hands, caught the newscaster’s cheeks between them. His pale lips moved, but he could not speak. A trickle of blood crawled from the lax mouth.
And—the world went dark! Hatch was not to understand what had happened until much later; he seemed to be kneeling alone in utter blackness, with only two coldly shining points of fire far distant, watching—growing—
The eyes of the dying man . . .
They came closer. From them poured a flood of inexplicable force, energy that raced into Hatch’s brain, shaking the very citadel of his mind. Then—the eyes were gone.
The darkness, too, had fled. Hatch blinked dazedly, looking down at Manning—quite dead now, for the blood had ceased to flow, and no respiration lifted the hollow chest. The newscaster stood up. His cheeks felt clammy; the blood on them was evaporating in the snowy wind that blew down from Old Baldy Peak.
THE sound of running feet made Hatch start. He turned toward the roadster, and then paused. Hastily he lifted his hands above his head and stepped into the glare of the headlights.
Four men in the blue uniforms of the secret police sprang out of the darkness. They jerked to a halt; one lifted his gun. Another struck it down.
“Cut it! That isn’t Manning!”
“Keep ’em up, buddy,” the first guard growled, coming forward. He ran swift fingers over Hatch’s clothing. “Okay.”
“He’s unarmed?” a new voice asked, low and incisive. Now Hatch made out a dwarfed figure crouching beside Manning’s body, with a white blotch of a face twisted over his shoulder.
“Yes sir.”
The figure arose and came forward. Hatch recognized Raymond Gerold, chief of the secret police, military arm of Commander Perrett. He was a spare, middle-aged fellow, with cool black eyes peering from under shaggy gray brows.
“Two of you—Peters, Feld—carry this—” He jerked his head at the corpse—“to the hospital.”
They obeyed. Hatch stared at Gerold’s grim face, leprously white in the blaze of the mercury-vapor headlights. A little breath of fear touched him. This man was all-powerful . . .
Gerold said crisply, “Who are you?”
Hatch explained and showed his pass. “I came to see Doctor Manning.” Involuntarily the glances of both men flickered to the roadside where the body had lain.
“Hatch—yes, I remember. The telecaster. What was the purpose of your visit?”
“It’s my job to get news—”
“This isn’t news. Manning was shot while attempting to escape. That’s all. You will make no mention of it to anyone. Is that clear?”
Hatch nodded.
“Good. Now—was Manning alive when you got here?”
A little warning note tingled in the newscaster’s brain. He shook his head. “I don’t think so. He was dying—”
“Did he say anything?”
“No.” Somehow Hatch felt that his denial lacked conviction. But after a moment Gerold’s face relaxed in a tight smile.
“You are either truthful or very unwise. Under the circumstances, there’s no point in your coming further, I think?”
“I guess not.” It cost Hatch an effort to submit, but he was vividly conscious of the two guards flanking Gerold, their weapons ready. He got back into the roadster, turned it around with a snarling of gears. As the car gathered speed, he caught a glimpse of Gerold’s face in the rearview mirror, and whispered an oath through white lips.
“But what could I do?” he said aloud, with hopeless desperation. “They’d have killed me. And it wouldn’t have helped, anyway. Damn it all!”
When he reached the main road, he turned south toward San Bernardino, only a few miles distant. He needed a drink. On the outskirts of the city he parked the car near a bar and entered the establishment.
It was almost empty. The bartender, a fat, moon-faced fellow, flicked a towel over the bar. “Yessir. What’ll it be?”
“Scotch—double.”
The man set out the drink. Hatch thought he heard the bartender say something, very softly.
His nerves were taut. He snapped, louder than he had intended, “All right, you’ll get a tip! You don’t have to ask for it.”
The other’s round eyes widened. He tried to speak, failed, and finally sputtered incoherent denial. Hatch felt a surge of irritation.
“Damn it, I heard you, didn’t I?”
“But I didn’t say anything—”
“He’s right, mister,” a new voice broke in. “You must be tighter than you look. He didn’t say a word.” Hatch glanced aside at a lanky, grinning youth who sat a few stools away. Silently he finished his drink, and, regretting his outburst, put a bill on the bar and left. He thought he heard the bartender murmur an insult to his back, but ignored it.
A man stood just outside the door; another, a dwarfish figure, was moving swiftly away. For a moment Hatch thought he recognized Gerold, but in the dim light, he could not be sure. The other touched Hatch’s arm. His face looked yellow in the gleam of the street-lamps, unhealthily pale, with pouches beneath the eyes and a black, bristling moustache. And he said, or seemed to say—for his lips did not move—
“I’d better frisk him. Gerold said he was unarmed, but he may have had a gun in the car.”
The newscaster turned, staring in amazement. “What?”
THE man gave him a quick, odd glance. “Eh?” He flipped open his coat, showed the silver badge of the secret police. “You’re Hatch?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got orders to take you to Los Angeles.”
Hatch’s stomach seemed to drop away. It had been Gerold, then, lurking in the shadows. The agent was still talking, apparently, though his lips were immobile. Fragmentary murmurs . . .
“. . . he won’t put up a scrap . . . careful, though . . . Gerold said . . . important as hell . . .”
And then, quite suddenly, with a queer, fantastic certainty, Hatch realized the incredible truth. He had become a telepath. He was reading the other man’s mind.
Like an electric shock came the memory of Manning’s death, and the moment when the world had been blotted out in darkness, when the dying man’s eyes had—changed! What amazing thing had taken place then? What undreamed-of power had Manning implanted in the newscaster’s brain?
Hatch asked slowly, tentatively, “Where’s Gerold?”
“That doesn’t matter,” the agent said aloud, but his thoughts revealed more. Gerold had been waiting at the door of the bar. He had trailed Hatch from the concentration camp. Why?
No doubt he had become suspicious after the newscaster had driven away. Perhaps he had realized that Manning might have revealed the secret of telepathy. And the little scene in the bar room had shown him that he had been right.
Hatch’s brain was a whirling turmoil of questions. The agent took his arm, urged him toward a black limousine at the curb. Hatch made no resistance; he knew it would be useless.
He relaxed on the cushions beside the other, who meshed the gears and swung the car about. Glancing around, the newscaster saw another automobile trailing them closely. Gerold was taking no chances.
But—telepathy! It was incredible. How could Manning have managed to transmit the weird power in the fraction of a minute? Yet Hatch realized that he had the power to read minds, and, understanding that, he felt a curious little thrill. He had a defense, a weapon, that no other man in the world possessed.
He concentrated on reading the mind of his captor. There were words he seemed to hear soundlessly, intermingled with snatches of thought that were wordless, but were no less clear for that. And there were images, pictures—Gerold’s face, a vision of a gun, and, ludicrously incongruous, a swift realization of a steaming cup of brown liquid, coffee. The thoughts flashing through the agent’s mind were vividly clear to Hatch.
The newscaster decided that he could only read the ideas that passed through the other’s mind from moment to moment. He could not probe into memory. That was beyond the threshold. Nevertheless, a few questions might give him some ideas . . .
“Where are you taking me?”
No answer. But the agent thought of Pasadena; he pictured a small white bungalow and a man standing before it. The man’s face seemed blurred, shifting and changing, holding no recognizable features. Hatch guessed the agent had been told to drive to a certain rendezvous in Pasadena and meet a man there, but seemingly did not know who the latter was, or what he looked like.
Curiously he asked, “What’s the camp like? Are the stories they tell about Gerold really true?”
Then he wished he hadn’t asked. Thoughts and scenes of sickening brutality nauseated him. In the agent’s mind he sensed disgust and repulsion; obviously he worked rather unwillingly under orders. Perhaps he might be open to a suggestion . . .
Hatch tried it. But the man was proof against bribery or any other appeals. He drove on in stony silence, and presently the car came into the outskirts of Pasadena. Then it halted before a small white bungalow—one Hatch recognized. A man was standing at the curb. He waved; the agent stopped the limousine and got out; the new arrival took the wheel. He sent the car out into the stream of traffic. Hatch scrutinized him.
He saw a moon-faced, bald fellow, peering nearsightedly through eyeball-fitting lenses, and simultaneously read the thought in the man’s mind.
“How can I make it clear? If he knows nothing of science it may be difficult—”
“You might begin by telling me who you are,” Hatch said. The other shot him a swift glance.
“Incredible! You can read my mind, eh?”
Hatch nodded.
“Well—well! Van Boren’s my name. Gerold televised me—he wants me to explain things while we’re heading for Los Angeles. I was to visit Manning tomorrow, but it seems he’s dead.”
A little shiver shook Hatch, but somehow he sensed that Van Boren was sincere—that his values were scientific rather than human, but that the man could, to some extent, be trusted.
THE moon-faced man guided the car under Pasadena Bridge’s amber lights. “I know something of Manning’s work. I’ve been going through his papers . . . you should know something of this theory of his. It may help, later on. You know the brain sends a form of wave-energy through the neural tissue, eh? Good. Well, the nervous system is made up of anatomically independent units that are separated from each other by intervals—the synapses. A thought-impulse has to jump this synapse. Manning felt that if the waves could leap an infinitesimal gap, they could leap a much larger one. He contended that the electrical energy of the brain is broadcast from the body—and it’s changed with thought—it’s been proved that mental concentration alters the alpha rhythm.”
“Like television,” Hatch put in.
“Exactly like television! If the brain can be tuned in on the proper wave-length, telepathy will be an accomplished fact. Manning found out how to tune it in. Gerold said he talked—under torture, I suppose.”
Van Boren thought, “Damn them! Killing a scientific genius like Manning!”
His round face giving no hint of his emotion, he went on. “No doubt you read my mind then. However, Gerold knows how I feel about such things. But I am very valuable to him, so I still live . . . Manning said the thing came to him suddenly, like a man learning how to swim. Or, rather, like a man who’d never opened his eyes suddenly learning how to use the muscles of his eyelids.”
“He thought it’d be like that,” Hatch said. “When I talked to him, he said he’d had glimpses of the—the ‘wider vision.’ But only glimpses.”
“So. Well, Manning said he could impart the power telepathically, as he did to you tonight. The process couldn’t be reversed. You can never lose the ability now. But you can reveal the method to others, as Manning did to you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Hatch grunted. “I don’t know the trick.”
“Manning didn’t have time to tell you. I can help—that’s my job. With my guidance you can, I think, rediscover how to impart the telepathic function.”
“What’s Gerold’s plan?”
“I don’t know,” Van Boren said curtly. “But telepathy’s a tremendous weapon—if its use is limited to America. Also, it’s dynamite.”
But Hatch read the scientist’s mind. Van Boren, too, was wondering.
“Why did he insist on bringing this man to Los Angeles?” he was thinking. “Commander Perrett is on his way to the San Bernardino concentration camp. He wanted to get Manning’s secret . . .”
So Perrett, autocrat of America, was coming west from Washington! And, apparently, Gerold didn’t want Perrett and Hatch to meet. Why? There were cross-currents here—why hadn’t Gerold arrested the telecaster personally? That would have been the logical course. Unless—unless Gerold, for some reason, feared Hatch would read his mind!
And the chief of the secret police did not want Hatch to meet Perrett. But Perrett was not used to having his wishes thwarted. When he learned the situation, he would come to Los Angeles and order Gerold to produce his captive. What if Gerold disobeyed?
He wouldn’t dare. But he was clever, diabolically so. And many prisoners had been shot while trying to escape . . .
Suddenly Hatch knew that he faced death. His body crawled with cold perspiration. He glanced back, saw an automobile’s headlights not far away. A police car? They were approaching Glendale, a populous city near Los Angeles. Traffic became denser.
Hatch acted. He flung open the door at his side and leaped out, almost losing his balance as momentum carried his body forward. He heard a startled cry.
Lights flared into his eyes. He had already seen a taxi in the stream of traffic. He made for it, racing perilously through the jolting, grinding rush of automobiles. The taxi moved forward; Hatch made a desperate leap, felt his feet hit the running board. He gripped the door-handle with white knuckles and shouted at the driver.
“Get me out of here—quick! There’s twenty bucks in it for you!”
A frowning face examined him. Hatch read the man’s thoughts, said swiftly, “It’s nothing illegal. Some guys are after me—”
“Okay, buddy. Hop in.”
Van Boren was lumbering into sight. Beyond him uniformed men raced. The scientist leaped on the running-board, but Hatch thrust him away with a stiff-armed jab. The taxi swerved around the comer, and, picking up speed, roared through a dim-lit street.
“Think you can get away?” Hatch asked, his voice not quite steady.
“Sure. I know this burg like a book. Don’t worry, fella.”
HATCH wondered if the driver knew he was helping a captive escape from the secret police. But—he read the man’s mind—there was no suspicion in it of the truth.
For a while Hatch concentrated on keeping his seat as the taxi whirled and raced intricately through Glendale. Finally the driver said over his shoulder, “We’ve shook ’em. Where do you want to head?”
Where could he go? Not to his apartment, certainly. That would be fatal. Abruptly he thought of his secretary. He gave a Los Angeles address.
