Supermind
“My secretary,” Burris said, “has talents enough of his own. But you,
you’re something brand-new. It’s wonderful, Malone. It’s exciting.”
“It’s a new taste thrill,” Malone murmured. “Try Bon-Ton B-Complex
Bolsters. Learn to eat your blanket as well as sleep with it.”
“What?” Burris said.
“Never mind,” Malone said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“But I—”
“I know you wouldn’t,” Malone said, “because I don’t.”
Sir Lewis cleared his throat “My dear boy,” he said, “you represent a
breakthrough. You are an adult.”
“That,” Malone said testily, “is not news.”
“But you are a telepathic adult,” Sir Lewis said. “Many of them are
capable of developing it into a useful ability. Children who have the
talent may accidentally develop the ability to use it, but that almost
invariably results in insanity. Without proper guidance, a child is no
more capable of handling the variety of impressions it receives from
adult minds than it is capable of understanding a complex piece of
modern music. The effort to make a coherent whole out of the
impression overstrains the mind, so to speak, and the damage is
permanent.”
“So here I am,” Malone said, “and I’m not nuts. At least I don’t think
I’m nuts.”
“Because you are an adult,” Sir Lewis went on. “Telepathy seems to be
almost impossible to develop in an adult, even difficult to test for
it. A child may be tested comparatively simply; an adult, seldom or
never.”
He paused to relight his pipe.
“However,” he went on, “the Psychical Research Society’s executive
board discovered a method of bringing out the ability in a talented
child as far back as 1931. All of us who are sane telepaths today owe
our ability to that process, which was applied to us, in each case,
before the age of sixteen.”
“How about me?” Malone said.
“You,” Sir Lewis said, “are the first adult ever to learn the use of
psionic powers from scratch.”
“Oh,” Malone said. “And that’s why Mike Fueyo, for instance, could
learn to teleport, though his older sister couldn’t.”
“Mike was an experiment,” Sir Lewis said. “We decided to teach him
teleportation without teaching him telepathy. You saw what happened.”
“Sure I did,” Malone said. “I had to stop it.”
“We were forced to make you stop him,” Sir Lewis said. “But we also
let him teach you his abilities.”
“So I’m an experiment,” Malone said.
“A successful experiment,” Sir Lewis added.
“Well,” Malone said dully, “bully for me.”
“Don’t feel that way,” Sir Lewis said. “We have—”
He stopped suddenly, and glanced at the others. Burris and Lou stood
up, and Sir Lewis followed them.
“Sorry,” Sir Lewis said in a different tone. “There’s something
important that we must take care of. Something quite urgent, I’m
afraid.”
“You can go on home, Malone,” Burris said. “We’ll talk later, but
right now there’s a crisis coming and we’ve got to help. Leave the
car. I’ll take care of it.”
“Sure,” Malone said, without moving.
Lou said, “Ken—” and stopped. Then the three of them turned and
started up the long, curving staircase that led to the upstairs rooms.
Malone sat in the Morris chair for several long minutes, wishing that
he were dead. Nobody made a sound. He rubbed his hands over the soft
leather and tried to tell himself that he was lucky, and talented, and
successful.
But he didn’t care.
He closed his eyes at last, and took a deep breath.
Then he vanished.
16
Two hours passed, somehow. Bourbon and soda helped them pass, Malone
discovered; he drank two highballs slowly, trying not to think about
anything, and kept staring around at the walls of his apartment
without really seeing anything. He felt terrible.
He made himself a third bourbon and soda and started in on it. Maybe
this one would make him feel better. Maybe, he thought, he ought to
break out the cigars and celebrate.
But there didn’t seem to be very much to celebrate, somehow.
He felt like a guinea pig being congratulated on having successfully
resisted a germ during an experiment.
He drank some more of the bourbon and soda. Guinea pigs didn’t drink
bourbon and soda, he told himself. He was better off than a guinea
pig. He was happier than a guinea pig. But he couldn’t imagine any
guinea pig in the world, no matter how heartbroken, feeling any worse
than Kenneth J. Malone.
He looked up. There was another guinea pig in the room.
Then he frowned. She wasn’t a guinea pig. She was one off the
experimenters. She was the one the guinea pig was supposed to fall in
love with, so the guinea pig could be nice and telepathic and all the
other experimenters could congratulate themselves. But whoever heard
of a scientist falling in love with a guinea pig? It was fate. And
fate was awful. Malone had often suspected it, but now he was sure.
Now he saw things from the guinea pig’s side, and fate was terrible.
“But Ken,” the experimenter said. “It isn’t like that at all.”
“It is, too,” Malone said. “It’s even worse, but that’ll have to wait.
When I have some more to drink it will get worse. Watch and see.”
“But Ken—” Lou hesitated, and then went on. “Don’t feel sad about
being an experiment. We’re all experiments.”
“I’m the guinea pig,” Malone said. “I’m the only guinea pig. You said
so.”
“No, Ken,” she said. “Remember, all of us in the PRS got early
training when it was new and untried. Some of those methods weren’t as
good as we now have them; that’s why a man like your boss sometimes
tends to have a little trouble.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “But I’m your guinea pig. You made me dance
through hoops and do tricks and everything just for an experiment.
That’s what.” He took another swallow of his drink. “See?” he said.
“It’s getting worse already.”
“No, it’s not,” Lou said. “It’s getting better, if you’ll only listen.
I wasn’t given this job, Ken. I volunteered for it.”
“That isn’t any better,” Malone said morosely.
“I volunteered because I—because I liked you,” Lou said. “Because I
wanted to work with you, wanted to be with you.”
“It’s more experimenting,” Malone said flatly. “More guinea-pigging
around.”
“It isn’t, Ken,” Lou said. “Believe me. Look into my mind. Believe
me.”
Malone tried. A second passed....
And then a long time passed, without any words at all.
“Well, well,” Malone said at last. “If this is the life of a guinea
pig, I’m all for it.”
“I’m all for guinea pigs’ rights,” Lou said. “Life, Liberty and the
Pursuit of Me.”
“Agreed,” Malone said. “How about that crisis, by the way? Are you
going to have to leave suddenly again?”
Lou stretched lazily on the couch. “That’s all over with, thank God,”
she said. “We had to get our agent out of Miami Beach, and cover his
tracks at the same time.”
“Tricky,” Malone said.
“Very,” Lou said.
“But—” Malone blinked. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Your agent? You
mean you had Governor Flarion killed?”
Lou nodded soberly. “We had to,” she said. “That paranoid mind of his
had built up a shield we simply couldn’t get through. He had plans for
making himself president, you know—and all the terrifying
potentialities of an embryonic Hitler.” She grimaced. “We don’t like
being forced to kill,” she said, “but sometimes we’ve got to.”
Malone thought of his own .44 Magnum, and the times he had used it,
and nodded very slowly.
“There are still a couple of questions, though,” he said. “For
instance, there’s that trip to Russia. Why _did_ you make it? Was it
your father?”
“Of course it was,” Lou said. “We had to get him back in and make sure
he was safe.”
“You mean that Vasili Garbitsch is a PSR member?” Malone said,
stunned.
“Well, really,” Lou said. “Did you think my father would really be a
spy? We had to get him back to Russia; he was needed for work in the
Kremlin. That’s why we nudged Boyd into making the arrest.”
“And the others?” Malone said. “Brubitsch and Borbitsch?”
“Real spies,” Lou said. “Bad ones, but real. Any more questions?”
“Some,” Malone said. “Were you kidding about that drink in Moscow?”
She shook her head. “I wish I had been,” she said. “But I was
concentrating on Petkoff, who didn’t know a thing about the drugged
drink. I didn’t catch anything else until after I’d swallowed it. And
then it was too late.”
“Good old Petkoff,” Malone said. “Always helpful. But he was right
about one thing, anyway.”
“What?” Lou said.
“The FBI,” Malone said. “He told us it was a secret police
organization. And, by God, in a way it is!”
Lou grinned. Malone started to laugh outright. They found themselves
very close and the laughter stopped, and there was some more time
without words. When Malone broke free, he had a suddenly sobered
expression on his face.
“Hey,” he said. “What about Tom Boyd? He knows a lot but he hasn’t got
any talents, as far as I know, and—”
“He’ll be all right,” Lou said. “Andrew and the others have thought of
that.”
“But he knows an awful lot about the evidence I dug up.”
“Andrew will give him a cover-up explanation they’re working out,” Lou
said. “That will convince Boyd there’s nothing more to worry about. Of
course, we may have to change his mind about a few things, but we can
do that, probably through you, since you know him best. There’s
nothing for you to worry over, Ken. Nothing at all.”
“Good,” Malone said. He leaned over and kissed her. “Because I’m not
in the least worried.”
Lou sighed deeply, looking off into space.
“Luba Malone,” she said. “It sounds nice. And, after all, my mother
was Irish. At least it sounds better than Garbitsch.”
“What doesn’t?” Malone said automatically. Then he blinked. “Hey,
_I’m_ Malone!” he said. “How could you be Malone?”
“Me?” Lou said. She caroled happily. “I’m Malone because I love you,
love you with all my heart.”
“That,” Malone said, “does it. A woman after my own heart.”
Lou made a low curtsy.
“And a woman of grace and breeding,” Malone said. “Eftsoons, if that
means anything.”
“You know,” Lou said, “I like you even better when you’re being Sir
Kenneth. Especially when you’re talking to yourself.”
“My innate gallantry and all my good qualities come out,” Malone said.
“Yes,” Lou said. “Indeed they do. All over the place. It’s nice to go
back to Elizabethan times, anyhow, in the middle of all these
troubles.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Malone said. “There’s always been trouble. In the
Middle Ages, it was witches. In the Seventeenth Century, it was
demons. In the Nineteenth it was revolutions. In—”
Lou cut him off with a kiss. When she broke away Malone raised his
eyebrows.
“I prithee,” he said, “interrupt me not. I am developing a scheme of
philosophy. There have always been troubles. In the 1890’s there was a
Depression and panic, and the Spanish-American War—”
“All right, Sirrah,” Lou said. “And then what?”
“Let’s see,” Malone said, reverting to 1973 for a second. “In 1903
there was the airplane, and troubles abroad.”
“Yes?” Lou said. “Do go on, Sirrah. Your liege awaits your slightest
word.”
“Hmm,” Malone said.
“That, Milord, was a very slight word indeed,” Lou said. “What’s after
1903?”
Malone smiled and went back to the days of the First Elizabeth
happily.
“In 1914, it was enemy aliens,” said Sir Kenneth Malone.