Occasion ... for Disaster
Then he thought of something else. "Do you think this ... barrier of
mine will keep out those little bursts of mental energy?" he said.
Her Majesty looked judicious. "I really do," she said. "It does appear
quite impenetrable, Sir Kenneth. I can't understand how you're doing
it. Or why, for that matter."
"Well--" Malone began.
Her Majesty raised a hand. "No," she said. "I'd rather not know, if
you please." Her voice was stern, but just a little shaken. "The
thought of blocking off thought--the only real form of communication
that exists--is, frankly, quite horrible to me. I would rather be
blinded, Sir Kenneth. I truly would."
Malone thought of Dr. Marshall and blushed. Her Majesty peered at him
narrowly, and then smiled.
"You've been talking to my Royal Psychiatrist again, haven't you?" she
said. Malone nodded. "Frankly, Sir Kenneth," she went on, "I think
people pay too much attention to that sort of thing nowadays."
The subject, Malone recognized, was firmly closed. He cleared his
throat and started up another topic. "Let's talk about these energy
bursts," he said. "Do you still pick them up occasionally?"
"Oh, my, yes," Her Majesty said. "And it's not only me. Willie has
been picking them up too. We've had some long talks about it, Willie
and I. It's frightening, in a way, but you must admit that it's very
interesting."
"Fascinating," Malone muttered. "Tell me, have you figured out what
they might be, yet?"
Her Majesty shook her head. "All we know is that they do seem to occur
just before a person intends to make a decision. The burst somehow
appears to influence the decision. But we don't know how, and we don't
know where they come from, or what causes them. Or even why."
"In other words," Malone said, "we know absolutely nothing new."
"I'm afraid not, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "But Willie and I do
intend to keep working on it. It is important, isn't it?"
"Important," Malone said, "is not the word." He paused. "And now, if
your Majesty will excuse me," he said, "I'll have to go. I have work
to do, and your information has been most helpful."
"You may go, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, returning with what
appeared to be real pleasure to the etiquette of the Elizabethan
Court. "We are grateful that you have done so much, and continue to do
so much, to defend the peace of Our Realm."
"I pledge myself to continue in those efforts which please Your
Majesty," Malone said, and started back for the costume room. Once
he'd changed into his regular clothing again he snapped himself back
to the room he had rented in the Great Universal. He had a great deal
of thinking to do, he told himself, and not much time to do it in.
* * * * *
However, he was alone. That meant he could light up a cigar--something
which, as an FBI Agent, he didn't feel he should do in public. Cigars
just weren't right for FBI Agents, though they were all right for
ordinary detectives like Malone's father. As a matter of fact, he
considered briefly hunting up a vest, putting it on and letting the
cigar ash dribble over it. His father seemed to have gotten a lot of
good ideas that way. But, in the end, he rejected the notion as being
too complicated, and merely sat back in a chair, with an ashtray
conveniently on a table by his side, and smoked and thought.
Now, he knew with reasonable certainty that Andrew J. Burris was wrong
and that he, Malone, was right. The source of all the confusion in the
country was due to psionics, not to psychodrugs and Walt Disney spies.
His first idea was to rush back and tell Burris. However, this looked
like a useless move, and every second he thought about it made it seem
more useless. He simply didn't have enough new evidence to convince
Burris of anything whatever; psychiatric evidence was fine to back up
something else, but on its own it was still too shaky to be accepted
by the courts, in most cases. And Burris thought even more strictly
than the courts in such matters.
Not only that, Malone realized with alarm, but even if he did manage
somehow to convince Burris there was very little chance that Burris
would stay convinced. If his mind could be changed by a burst of wild
mental power--and why not? Malone reflected--then he could be
unconvinced as often as necessary. He could be spun round and round
like a top and never end up facing the way Malone needed him to face.
That left the burden of solving the problem squatting like a
hunchback's hunch squarely on Malone's shoulders. He thought he could
bear the weight for a while, if he could only think of some way of
dislodging it. But the idea of its continuing to squat there forever
was horribly unnerving. "Quasimodo Malone," he muttered, and uttered a
brief prayer of thanks that his father had been spared a classical
education. "Ken" wasn't so bad. "Quasi" would have been awful.
He couldn't think of any way to get a fingerhold on the thing that
weighed him down. Slowly, he went over it in his mind.
Situation: an unidentifiable something is attacking the United States
with an untraceable something else from a completely unknown source.
Problem: how do you go about latching on to anything as downright
nonexistent as all that?
Even the best detective, Malone told himself irritably, needed clues
of some kind. And this thing, whatever it was, was not playing fair.
It didn't go around leaving bloody fingerprints or lipsticked
cigarette butts or packets of paper matches with _Ciro's, Hollywood_,
written on them. It didn't even have an alibi for anything that could
be cracked, or leave tire marks or footprints behind that could be
photographed. Hell, Malone thought disgustedly, it wasn't that the
trail was cold. It just _wasn't_.
Of course, there were ways to get clues, he reflected. He thought of
his father. His father would have gone to the scene of the crime, or
questioned some of the witnesses. But the scene of the crime was
anywhere and everywhere, and most of the witnesses didn't know they
were witnessing anything. Except for Her Majesty, of course--but he'd
already questioned her, and there hadn't been any clues he could
recall in that conversation.
Malone stubbed out his cigar, lit another one absent-mindedly, and
rescued his tie, which was working its slow way around to the side of
his collar. There were, he remembered, three classic divisions of any
crime: method, motive and opportunity. Maybe thinking about those
would lead somewhere.
As an afterthought, he got up, found a pencil and paper with the
hotel's name stamped on them in gold and came back to the chair.
Clearing the ashtray aside, he put the paper on the table and divided
the paper into three vertical columns with the pencil. He headed the
first one _Method_, the second _Motive_ and the third _Opportunity_.
He stared at the paper for a while, and decided with some trepidation
to take the columns one by one. Under _Method_, he put down: "Little
bursts. Who knows cause?" Some more thought gave him another item, and
he set it down under the first one: "Psionic. Look for psionic
people?"
That apparently was all there was to the first column. After a while
he moved to number two, _Motive_. "Confuse things," he wrote with
scarcely a second's reflection. But that didn't seem like enough. A
few minutes more gave him several other items, written down one under
the other. "Disrupt entire US. Set US up for invasion? Martians?
Russians? CK: Is Russia having trble?" That seemed to exhaust the
subject and with some relief he went on. But the title of the next
column nearly stopped him completely.
_Opportunity._ There wasn't anything he could put down under that one,
Malone told himself, until he knew a great deal more about method. As
things stood at present, the best entry under _Opportunity_ was a
large, tastefully done question mark. He made one, and then sat back
to look at the entire list and see what help it gave him:
_Method_
Little bursts. Who knows cause?
Psionic. Look for psionic people?
_Motive_
Confuse things.
Disrupt entire US.
Set US up for invasion?
Martians?
Russians?
CK: Is Russia having trble?
_Opportunity_
?
Somehow, it didn't seem to be much help, when he thought about it. It
had a lot of information on it, but none of the information seemed to
lead anywhere. It did seem to be established that the purpose was to
confuse or disrupt the United States, but this didn't seem to point to
anybody except a Russian, an alien or a cosmic practical joker. Malone
could see no immediate way of deciding among the trio. However, he
told himself, there are other ways to start investigating a crime.
There must be.
Psychological methods, for instance. People had little gray cells, he
remembered from his childhood reading. Some of the more brainy
fictional detectives never stooped to anything so low as an actual
physical clue. They concentrated solely on finding a pattern in the
crimes that indicated, infallibly, the psychology of the individual.
Once his psychology had been identified, it was only a short step to
actually catching him and putting him in jail until his psychology
changed for the better. Or, of course, until it disappeared entirely
and was buried, along with the rest of him, in a small wood box.
That wasn't Malone's affair. All he had to do was take the first few
steps and actually find the man. And perhaps psychology and pattern
was the place to start. Anyhow, he reflected, he didn't have any other
method that looked even remotely likely to lead to anything except
brain-fag, disappointment, and catalepsy.
But he didn't have enough cases to find a pattern. There must, he
thought, be a way to get some more. After a few seconds he thought of
it.
* * * * *
At first he thought of asking Room Service for all the local and
out-of-state papers, but that, he quickly saw, was a little unwise.
People didn't come to Las Vegas to catch up on the news; they came to
get away from it. A man might read Las Vegas papers, and possibly even
his home town's paper if he couldn't break himself of the pernicious
habit. But nobody on vacation would start reading papers from
everywhere.
There was no sense in causing suspicion, Malone told himself. Instead,
he reached for the phone and called the desk.
"Great Universal, good afternoon," a pleasant voice said in his ear.
Malone blinked. "What time _is_ it?" he said.
"A few minutes before six," the voice said. "In the evening, sir."
"Oh," Malone said. It was later than he'd thought; the list had taken
some time. "This is Kenneth J. Malone," he went on, "in Room--" He
tried to remember the number of his room and failed. It seemed like
four or five days since he'd entered it. "Well, wherever I am," he
said at last, "send up some kind of a car for me and have a taxi
waiting outside."
The voice sounded unperturbed. "Right away, sir," it said. "Will there
be anything else?"
"I guess not," Malone said. "Not now, anyhow." He hung up and stubbed
out the latest in his series of cigars.
The hallway car arrived in a few minutes. It was manned by a muscular
little man with beady eyes and thinning black hair. "You Malone?" he
said when the FBI Agent opened the door.
"Kenneth J.," Malone said. "I called for a car."
"Right outside, Chief," the little man said in a gravelly voice. "Just
hop in and off we go into the wild blue yonder. Right?"
"I guess so," Malone said helplessly. He followed the man outside,
locked his door and climbed into a duplicate of the little car that
had taken him to his room in the first place.
"Step right in, Chief," the little man said. "We're off."
Malone, overcoming an immediate distaste for the chummy little fellow,