Occasion ... for Disaster
And why had they started the whole row in the first place?
The PRS, he saw, was even more widely spread than he had thought. It
had branches in almost every major city in the United States, in
Europe, South Africa, South America and Australia. There was even a
small branch society in Greenland. True, the Communist disapproval of
such nonmaterialistic, un-Marxian objectives as Psychical Research
showed up in the fact that there were no registered branches in the
Sino-Soviet bloc. But that, Malone thought, hardly mattered. Maybe in
Russia they called themselves the Lenin Study Group, or the Better
Borschch League. He was fairly sure, from all the evidence, that the
PRS had some kind of organization even behind the Iron Curtain.
Money backing didn't seem to be much of a problem, either. Malone
checked for the supporters of the organization and found a microfilmed
list that ran into the hundreds of thousands of names, most of them
ordinary people who seemed to be interested in spiritualism and the
like, and who donated a few dollars apiece to the PRS. Besides this
mass of small donations, of course, there were a few large ones, from
independently wealthy men who gave support to the organization and
seemed actively interested in its aims.
It wasn't an unusual picture; just an exceptionally big one.
Malone sighed and went on to the personal dossiers.
Sir Lewis Carter himself was a well-known astronomer and
mathematician. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal
Astronomical Society and the Royal Mathematical Society. He had been
knighted for his contributions in higher mathematics only two years
before he had come to live in the United States. Malone went over the
papers dealing with his entry into the country carefully, but they
were all in order and they contained absolutely nothing in the way of
usable clues.
Sir Lewis' books on political and historical philosophy had been
well-received, and he had also written a novel, "But Some Are More
Equal," which, for a few weeks after publication, had managed to claw
its way to the bottom of the best-seller list.
And that was that. Malone tried to figure out whether all this
information did him any good, and the answer came very quickly. The
answer was no. He opened the second dossier.
Luba Ardanko had been born in New York. Her mother had been a woman of
Irish descent named Mary Foley, and had died in '69. Her father had
been a Hungarian named Chris Yorgen Ardanko, and had died in the same
year.
Malone sighed. Somewhere in the dossiers, he was sure, there was a
clue, the basic clue that would tell him everything he needed to know.
His prescience had never been so strong; he knew perfectly well that
he was staring at the biggest, most startling and most complete
disclosure of all. And he couldn't see it.
He stared at the folders for a long minute. What did they tell him?
What was the clue.
And then, very slowly, the soft light of a prodigal sun illuminated
his mind.
"Mr. Malone," Malone said gently, "you are a damned fool. There are
times when it is necessary to discard the impossible after you have
seen that the obscure is the obvious."
He wasn't sure whether that meant anything, or even whether he knew
what he was saying. But, as the entire structure of facts became
clear, and then turned right upside down in his mind and changed into
something else entirely--something that told him not only who, and
where, but also why, he became absolutely sure of one thing.
He knew the final answer.
And it _was_ obvious. Obvious as all hell!
XIV
There was, of course, only one thing to do and only one place to go.
Malone teleported to the New York offices of the FBI and went
immediately downstairs to the garage, where a specially-built Lincoln
awaited him at all times.
One of the mechanics looked up curiously as Malone headed for the car.
"Want a driver?" he said.
Malone thanked his lucky stars that he didn't have to get into any
lengthy and time-consuming argument about whether or not he was on
vacation. "No, thanks," he said. "This is a solo job."
That, he told himself, was for sure. He drove out onto the streets and
into the heavy late-afternoon traffic of New York. The Lincoln handled
smoothly, but Malone didn't press his luck in the traffic which he
thought was even worse than the mess he'd driven through with the
happy cab driver two days before. He wasn't in any hurry now, after
all. He had all the time in the world, and he knew it. They--and, for
once, Malone could put real names to that "they"--would still be
waiting for him when he got there.
_If_ he got there, he thought suddenly, turning a corner and being
confronted with a great mass of automobiles wedged solidly fender to
fender as far as the eye could see. The noise of honking horns was
deafening, and great clouds of smoke rose up to make the scene look
like the circle of Hell devoted to hot-rod drivers. Malone cursed and
sweated until the line began to move, and then cursed and sweated some
more until he was out of the city at last.
It took quite a lot of time. New York traffic, in the past forty-eight
hours, hadn't gotten better; it had gotten a lot worse. He was nearly
exhausted by the time he finally crossed the George Washington Bridge
and headed west. And, while he drove, he began to let his reflexes
take over most of the automotive problems now that New York City was
behind him.
He took all his thoughts from behind the shield that had sheltered
them and arrayed them neatly before him. They were beamed, he told
himself firmly, to one particular group of persons and to no one else.
Everything was perfectly clear; all he had to do now was explain it.
Malone had wondered, over the years, about the detectives in books.
They always managed to wrap everything up in the last chapter, which
was perfectly all right by itself. But they always had a whole crowd
of suspects listening to them, too. Malone knew perfectly well that he
could never manage a setup like that. People would interrupt him.
Things would happen. Two dogs would rush in and start a battle royal
on the floor. There would be an earthquake or an invasion of little
green Venusians, or else somebody would just decide to faint and
cause a furor.
But now, at long last, he realized, he had his chance. Nobody could
interrupt him. And he could explain to his heart's content.
Because the members of the PRS were telepathic. And Kenneth J. Malone,
he thought happily, was not.
Luba, he was sure, would be tuned in on him as he drove toward their
Pennsylvania hiding place. At least, he wanted to think so; it made
things much more pleasant. And he hoped that Luba, or whoever was
really tuned in, would alert everybody else, so they could all hook in
and hear his grand final explanation of everything.
He opened his mind in that one special direction, beaming his thoughts
to nobody else but the group he'd decided on. A second of silence
passed.
And then a sound began. Malone had passed a company of soldiers some
yards back, but he hadn't noticed them particularly; with the country
under martial law, soldiers were going to be as common as tree frogs.
Now, however, something different was happening.
Malone felt the car tremble slightly, and stopped. Past him, rolling
along the side of the highway he was on, came a parade of thirty-ton
tanks. They rumbled and roared their slow, elephantine way down the
highway and, after what seemed about three days, disappeared from
sight. Malone wondered what the tanks were for, and then dismissed it
from his mind. It certainly wasn't very pleasant to think about, no
matter how necessary it turned out to be.
He started up again. There were few cars on the road, although a lot
of them were parked along the sides. A series of _Closed_ signs on
filling stations explained that, and Malone began to be grateful for
the national emergency. It allowed him to drive without much
interference, anyhow.
* * * * *
_And a hearty good afternoon to all, he thought--especially to Miss
Luba Ardanko. I hope she's tuned in ... and, if she isn't, I hope
somebody alerts her. Frankly, I'd rather talk to her than to anyone
else I can think of at the moment. As a matter of fact, it's a little
easier to concentrate if I talk out loud, so I think I'll do that._
He swerved the car at this point, neatly avoiding a broken wooden
crate that crouched in wait for him. "Road hog," he told it bitterly,
and went on.
"Nothing personal," he went on after a second. "I don't care if you're
_all_ listening in, as a matter of fact. And I'm not going to hide
anything." He thought a second, and then added: "Frankly, I'm not sure
I've got anything to hide."
He paused and, in his imagination, he could almost hear Luba's voice.
_I'm listening, Kenneth,_ she said. _Go on._
He fished around in his mind for a second, wondering exactly where to
start. Then he decided, in the best traditions of the detective story,
not to mention "Alice in Wonderland," to start at the beginning.
"The dear old Psychical Research Society," he said, speaking earnestly
to his windshield, "has been going on for a good many years now--since
the 1880's, as a matter of fact. That's a long time and it adds up to
a lot of Psychical Research. A lot of famous and intelligent people
have belonged to the Society. And, with all that, it's hardly
surprising that, after nearly a hundred years of work, something
finally turned up."
At this point, there was another interruption. A couple of sawhorses
blocked the road ahead of Malone. As he stared at them, he felt his
prescience begin to itch. He took out his .44 Magnum and slowed the
car, memorizing the road as he passed it. He stopped the car before
the sawhorses. Three enlisted men carrying M-1 rifles, and a stern,
pale captain, his bars pointing sideways and glittering on his
shoulders, appeared from the sides of the road.
The captain's voice was a military bark. "Out of the car!"
Malone began to obey.
"With your hands up!" the captain snapped. Malone dropped the .44
unobtrusively into his jacket pocket and complied. Then, as he came
out of the car, he teleported himself back to a section of the road
he'd memorized, ten feet behind the car. The four men were gaping,
dumbfounded, as Malone drew his gun and shot them. Then he removed the
sawhorses, got back in his car, reloaded the .44, put it back in his
holster and drove on.
"Now," he said in a thoughtful tone. "Where was I?"
He imagined Luba's voice saying: _You were telling us how, all this
time, it's hardly surprising--_
"Oh, yes," he said. "Well, then. So you solved some of the problems,
you'd set. You learned how to use and control telepathy and
teleportation, maybe, long before scientific boys like Dr. O'Connor
became interested. But you never announced it publicly. You kept the
knowledge all to yourself. 'Is this what the common folk call
telepathy, Lord Bromley?' 'Yes, Lady Bromley.' 'Much too good for
them, isn't it?' And maybe it is, at that; I don't know."
His thoughts, he recognized, were veering slightly. After a second he
got back on the track.
"At any rate," he went on, "you--all of your out there--are
responsible for what's happening to this country and all of Europe and
Asia--and, for all I know, the suburbs of Hell.
"I remember one of the book facsimiles you got me, for instance," he
said. "The writer tried for an 'expose' of the Society, in which he
attempted to prove that Sir Lewis Carter and certain other members
were trying to take over the world and run it to suit themselves,
using their psionic powers to institute a rather horrible type of
dictatorship over the world.
"It was a pretty convincing book in a lot of ways. The author