Supermind
the city.
It took quite a lot of time. Washington traffic was getting worse and
worse with every passing month, and the pedestrians were as nonchalant
as ever. As Malone turned a corner, a familiar face popped into view,
practically in front of his car. He swerved and got by without
committing homicide, and a cheerful voice said: “Thanks, sorry.”
“It’s okay, Chester,” Malone said. The big man skipped back to the
sidewalk and watched the car go by. Malone knew him slightly, a
private eye who did some work on the fringes of Washington crime;
basically a nice guy, but a little too active for Malone’s taste.
For a second he thought of asking the man to accompany him, but the
last thing Malone needed was muscle. What he wanted was brains, and he
even thought he might be developing some of those.
He was nearly sure of it by the time he finally did leave the city and
get out onto the highway that went south into the depths of Virginia.
And, while he drove, he began to use that brain, letting his reflexes
take over most of the driving problems now that the Washington traffic
tangle was behind him.
He took all his thoughts from behind the shield that had sheltered
them and arrayed them neatly before him. 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—and
that was all right. But they always had a whole crowd of suspects
listening to them, too. And Malone knew perfectly well that he could
never manage a set-up like that. People would be interrupting him.
Things would happen. Dogs would rush in and start a fight on the
floor. There would be earthquakes, or else somebody would suddenly
faint and interrupt him.
But now, at long last, he realized, he had his chance.
Nobody, he thought happily, could interrupt him. And he could explain
to his heart’s content.
Because the members of the PRS were telepathic. And Malone, he thought
cheerfully, was not.
Somebody, he was sure, would be tuned in on him as he drove toward
their Virginia hiding place. And he hoped that that somebody would
alert everybody else, so they could all tune in and hear his grand
final explanation of everything.
_And a hearty good afternoon to everybody_, he thought. _A very hearty
and happy and sunny good afternoon to all—and most especially to Miss
Luba Garbitsch. I hope she’s the one who’s tuned in—or that somebody
has alerted her by now, because I’d rather talk to her than to anyone
else I can think of out there._
_Nothing personal, you understand. It’s just that I’d like to show off
a little. I don’t need to hide anything from you—as a matter of
plain, simple fact, I can’t. Not with my shield down._
He paused then, and, in his imagination, he could almost hear Lou’s
voice.
“I’m listening, Kenneth,” the voice said. “Go on.”
_Well, then_, he thought. 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 thought, _had been going
along for a good many years now—since the 1880’s, as a matter of
fact, or somewhere near there. That’s a long time and a lot of
research. A lot of famous and intelligent men and women have belonged
to the Society. And in all that time, they’ve worked hard, and worked
sincerely, in testing every kind of psychic phenomenon. They’ve worked
impartially and scientifically to find out whether a given unusual
incident was explicable in terms of known natural laws, or was the
result of some unknown force._
_And it’s hardly surprising that, after about a hundred years of work,
something finally came of it._
“Not surprising at all,” he imagined Lou’s voice saying. “You’re
making things very clear, Kenneth.”
Or had that been “Sir Kenneth”? Malone wasn’t sure, but it didn’t
really matter. He spun the car around a curve in the highway, smiled
gently to himself, and went on.
_Naturally, to the average man in the street, the Society was just a
bunch of crackpots, and the more respected and famous the people who
belonged to it, the happier he was; it just proved his superiority to
them. He didn’t deal with crackpot notions, did he?_
_No, the Society did. And nobody except the members paid much
attention to what was going on._
_I remember one of the book facsimiles you gave me, for instance. Some
man, whose name I can’t recall, wrote a great “exposé” of the Society,
in which he tried to prove that Sir Lewis Carter and certain other
members were trying to take over the world and run it to suit
themselves, making a sort of horrible dictatorship out of their power
and position. At that, he wasn’t really far from the truth, though he
had it turned around a little. But the book shows that he has no
knowledge whatever of what psionics is, or how it works. He seems to
me to be just a little afraid of it, which probably adds to his
ignorance. And, as a result, he got a twisted idea of what the PRS is
actually doing._
He could almost hear Lou’s voice again. “Yes,” she was saying. “I
remember the book. It was put in our reference library for its
humorous aspects.”
_That’s right_, Malone thought. _It would be only funny to you. But it
would be frightening and terrible to an awful lot of people simply
because they wouldn’t understand what the Society was all about._
“All right,” Lou’s voice said helpfully. “And what _is_ it all about?”
Malone settled back in the driver’s seat as the car continued to spin
along the road. _It seems to me_, he thought carefully, _that any
telepath has to go one of two ways. Either, like Her Majesty or the
others we found when we discovered her two years ago, the telepath
ends up insane—or perhaps commits suicide, which is simply one step
further in retreat—or else he learns to understand and control his
own powers, and to understand other human beings so well that, if he
actually did control the world, everyone would benefit in the long
run._
_The difference between the two kinds is the difference between Her
Majesty and the PRS._
“That’s good thinking,” he could hear Lou say.
_No, it isn’t_, he thought; _it’s no more than guessing, and it could
be just as wild as you please. But there is one thing I do know: the
way to get a better world, or anyhow the first step, is to clear the
road ahead. And that means getting rid of the fools, idiots, maniacs,
blockheads, morons, psychopaths, paranoids, timidity-ridden,
fear-worshipers, fanatics, thieves, criminals and a whole lot more._
“Get rid of them?” Lou’s voice said.
_Well_, Malone thought, _I don’t mean they’ve got to be killed or
driven out of the civilized world. You’ve just got to get them out of
any place where their influence is heavily felt on society as a
whole._
“All right,” Lou’s voice said pleasantly. “And how could we go about
that? Do we write nasty letters to the editor?”
_There’s a much more effective way_, Malone thought. _There’s no
trouble in getting rid of a man if you can make him expose himself.
And you’ve managed that pretty well. You’ve thwarted their idiotic
plans, made them stumble over their own fumble-mindedness, played on
their neuroses, concocted errors for them to fight and, in general,
rigged things in any possible way so that they’d quit, or get fired,
or lose elections, or get arrested, or just generally get put out of
circulation somehow._
_It’s extremely effective—and it works very well._
_Sometimes, you’ve only had to put the blocks to individuals.
Sometimes whole nations have had to go. And sometimes it’s been
in-between, and you’ve managed to foul up whole organizations with
misplaced papers missent messages, error, and changed minds and
everything else you can think of._
_As a matter of fact, it sounds like fun._
“Well,” he imagined Lou saying, “it is fun, in away. But it’s a deadly
serious business, too.”
_Sure it is_, Malone thought. _I think the first time that came home
to me was when I saw what was happening in Russia, and compared it to
what had been going on over here. Tom Boyd saw that, too, when I
pointed it out to him—as you probably know if you were spying on my
mind at the time._
_Not that I mind that in the least._
_Come more often, by all means._
_But Tom, in case you weren’t listening, said: “Over here there are a
lot of confused jerks and idiots.... And in Russia there’s a lot of
confusion.”_
_Now, that’s perfectly true, and it spells out the difference. Over
here, you’ve been confusing the jerks and the idiots, getting rid of
them so the system can work properly. Over in Russia, on the other
hand, you’ve left the jerks and the idiots all alone to do their dirty
work, and you’ve just added to the confusion where necessary, so that
the system will break down of its own weight._
“But, after all,” Lou said, “things look pretty bad over here, too.
Look at the papers.”
_Everybody_, Malone thought, _has been telling me to go and look at the
newspapers. And when I do look at them I find all sorts of evidence of
confusion. Teachers resigning, senators and representatives goofing up
bills on Congress, gang wars cluttering up the streets with cadavers
and making things tough for the Sanitation Department, factional fights
in various organizations. Now, all of that looks pretty horrible in the
papers, but do you know something? It isn’t horrible at all._
_It’s pretty damn good, as a matter of fact._
_The teachers who are resigning, for instance, are the nincompoops
who’ve got to be pruned out so that competent teachers can come in.
And, with the higher salaries, more and more competent men and women
are going to be attracted to the job. The universities are going to be
freer and better places to work in; they won’t be monopolies any
more._
“Monopolies?” Lou said.
_In restraint of knowledge_, Malone thought. _The old monopoly was in
restraint of trade, and legal action helped to kill that kind. The
monopoly in restraint of knowledge took a little more killing, but
you’re doing the job quite nicely. And not only in the schools._
_The factional fights are having the same result. Look at the AAAM,
for instance. That organization is a monopoly, pure and simple.
Simple, anyhow. And what the factional fights are doing to it is just
breaking up the monopoly and letting knowledge free again._
_And then we come to Congress. Senators and representatives are having
a terrible time, some of them. There’s a fight going on between
Furbisher and Deeks because Deeks has discovered some evidence against
Furbisher. Who’s having the terrible time?_
_All of them?_
_Nope. Furbisher is. Deeks isn’t._
_And that’s the way it’s going all over. The useful, necessary
legislation is going through Congress now without being cluttered up
by stupid dam bills and water bills and other idiocies that simply
clog the works._
_And then, of course, there are the gang wars. Now, I feel as sorry
for the Sanitation Department as anybody, but at least they’re
cleaning the streets for good now. The boys who are dying off and
getting sent to hospitals and jails are just the ones who should have
been sent away long ago. Everybody knows that, but nobody can prove
it._
_Except the PRS._
_And the PRS is busy doing just what it can about that proof._
_And all it takes is a few of you. I don’t know how many—I don’t know
how many of you there really are, for that matter. But it must be a
fair number to stock all your branches with “top-level” executives and
the lower-level men and women who really believe in the PRS blind, and
do their best to keep it working._