Wheels Within Wheels

  But that would mean she was dealing with a psi-killer and such people were not supposed to exist. Of course, the psi-killers lurking about Occupied Space would certainly like everyone to think so. There had never been a confirmed case, but Jo was sure that somewhere a psi who could kill with his mind existed… in all of humanity’s trillions on all the inhabited planets, there should be at least one – more than one.

  One thing she knew: Larry uncovered something here, something potentially damaging to deBloise or his plans. There was even an intimation of deBloise’s involvement in her father’s death in that foreshortened call. But how could that be?

  Unless Old Pete was the link.

  The flitter slowed and hovered. Copia Hospital waited below.

  JO HAD NEVER BEEN inside a hospital before and she did not find the experience a pleasant one. It was as if the big building existed apart from the rest of society, isolated in its own time and space. The subculture here consisted of the physically ill and those who cared for them. Nothing else seemed to matter.

  A nurse guided her to Larry’s private room where she happened to catch his doctor on afternoon rounds. Most of the medical care as well as most of the scut work in the hospital could have been handled by machines at greater speed and at much less expense. But the fully automated hospital had been tried long ago… and found wanting. Patients simply didn’t do well in them. There appeared to be significant psychophysiological benefit to be derived from personalized care by another human being, rather than a machine. And so the. physical presence of the attending physician at intervals, and the ever-present nursing staff, remained an integral and indispensable part of the hospital routine.

  “At first we thought he was another case of the horrors,” the doctor said.

  He was a heavy-set, swarthy man who spoke in clipped tones and wasted neither time nor words. “But we have ways of testing for the horrors, and this is definitely something else.”

  Jo was surprised at Larry’s appearance – he looked so healthy. He lay quietly in the bed, breathing easily, a calm, untroubled expression on his face. He looked for all the world like a man taking an afternoon nap. But no one could wake him.

  “The horrors,” the doctor was saying, “is an unwillingness to respond to any external stimuli. The conscious and subconscious portions of the brain receive the stimuli but block response as part of the pathological process. Mr. Easly’s problem is different: he seems to be suffering from complete deafferentation.”

  “You’ll have to explain that term, doctor.” Jo was listening attentively but her eyes had not moved from Larry’s face.

  “Well, it means that all – and I mean all external stimuli are being blocked from his conscious mind. For a crude analogy, think of a computer with all its inputs disconnected.”

  “And what could cause something like that?”

  “Can’t say. Was he a stable personality? We could be dealing with a psychotic state.”

  “He was about as stable as they come,” Jo said, glancing at the doctor. “Could this… deafferentation, as you call it, be some sort of defense mechanism?”

  The doctor’s smile was condescending. “Highly unlikely. And if it were, it isn’t a very good one. It’s like sticking your head in the sand: it doesn’t do much for the rest of the body.”

  “It does if someone’s aiming at your head,” Jo muttered. She caught a puzzled look from the doctor and changed the subject. “How long before he comes out of it?”

  “Impossible to say at this point – tomorrow, a week, a year, I don’t know. But he will come out of it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “As sure as I can be with no past experience in this kind of thing. Our tests this morning showed a slight decrease in the level of deafferentation; we repeated them just before you came in, and if those show a further decrease, we’ll be able to estimate the rate of improvement and give you a prognosis.” So saying, he turned and left the room.

  Jo returned her attention to Larry and the sensation of an impending internal explosion returned, more forcefully than ever this time. Larry should not be like this – he was such a strong, capable man, it was obscene to see him lying in a comatose state, utterly helpless. And there was nothing she could do to help him.

  She grasped the top rung of the guardrail at the side of the bed and squeezed until her knuckles turned white and emitted little popping sounds of protest. She wanted to scream in frustration but held back. She would save it for the time when she caught up with the man who did this.

  Eventually, she made herself relax with slow, deep breaths. She released the guardrail and paced the room with her arms folded across her chest. She was almost herself again by the time the doctor returned.

  “He’s making excellent progress,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Should be out of it in six or eight hours if he continues his present rate of reafferentation.”

  Jo’s heart leaped. “How will he be when he wakes up?”

  The doctor shrugged. “How can I say? Anything I tell you will be pure guesswork. He could be alert and well rested, like a man awakening from a good night’s sleep, or he could be irreversibly psychotic. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  The nurses were changing shifts then and the new head nurse came in as the doctor was leaving.

  “Sorry,” she said, “but visiting hours are over.”

  “Not for me,” Jo said.

  Something in her tone made the head nurse hesitate. She glanced at the doctor.

  “Let her stay,” he said. “It’s a private room and she won’t be disturbing anybody.”

  The nurse shrugged. “As long as you chart it as done by your authority, it makes little difference to me.”

  When they were gone, Jo dropped into a chair, then flipped a switch and watched as part of the outer wall became transparent. The sun was setting in gory splendor, she closed her eyes and let its bloody dying light warm her face until it was out of sight behind he neighboring buildings. A noise behind her made her turn.

  The door was opening and through it passed a procession of five cloaked and hooded figures. The last to enter closed the door behind him and then all pulled back their hoods at once to reveal blue-gray skin, high-domed foreheads, and long black hair in a single braid.

  Vanek!

  Jo rose to her feet as the first visitor approached her. He appeared to be identical in features to the other four except for a spot of darker blue pigment to the left of center on his forehead. Although there was nothing menacing in their actions, Jo felt uneasy… these were the creatures who freely admitted murdering her father.

  “What do you want?” she asked, and cursed her voice for the way it quavered on the last word.

  The one who appeared to be the leader stopped before her and bowed at the waist. His four companions did likewise. Holding this position, they began a sonorous chant in the old Vanek tongue. There was a queer melodic quality to the sound that Jo found oddly soothing. As they held the final note, they resumed an erect posture.

  The leader then withdrew his hands from beneath his robe. The right held a cracked earthen bowl, the left a delicate carving of a fruit tree in bloom.

  “These belong to you,” he said in a sibilant voice. Jo could not read his expression clearly. There was deep respect there, but it was overlaid with a mixture of awe and vindication.

  She took the gifts and tried to speak, but found she could not. She knew they originally had been given to her father and holding them in her hands suddenly made her feel close to him again.

  “The evil one is near,” the leader said. “But he will not harm you again. I will see to that.”

  “Evil one!” she said, finding her voice at last. “Who is he? Where can I find him?”

  “Wheels within wheels, bendreth,” was the answer.

  Then the five Vanek pulled their hoods up and filed out the door without another word. Dazed by the entire incident, Jo simply stood in the middle of the room and watched them lea
ve. With the click of the closing door, however, she shook herself and hurried after them.

  The hall was deserted. A nurse rounded the corner and Jo stopped her.

  “Where did those Vanek go?” she asked.

  The nurse cocked her head. “Vanek?”

  “Yes, five of them were in Lawrence Easly’s room just now.”

  “My dear,” she said with a short laugh, “I’ve spent half my life working in this hospital and I’ve never seen one Vanek in these hails, let alone five! They have their own medicine.” Her brow, furrowed momentarily. “Come to think of it, though, there have been an awful lot of them outside the hospital lately. I guess they could sneak in, but I don’t know why they’d want to.”

  “But what about the room monitor?” Jo had noticed a vid receptor plate high on the wall opposite the foot of Larry’s bed. “Didn’t anyone see them on the screen?”

  “We only monitor the patient’s bed with that,” was the terse reply. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do.”

  Jo nodded absently and returned to the room. She placed the bowl and statue on the night table and pulled a chair up next to the bed. This was where she would spend the night. She was tired, but somehow she doubted she would be able to sleep.

  deBloise

  ELSON DEBLOISE TAPPED in Proska’s vidphone code and waited. He was calling from a public booth. In all the too-many dreadful years of his association with Proska, this was only the second time he had ever called him, and he was not going to entrust the ensuing conversation to his office phone. After the events of the past few days, there was no telling who might be listening in on that.

  He waited for Proska’s face to appear. How he hated and feared that little monster. How he wished he had never oozed into his office that day – was it really seventeen years ago? – and offered to put Finch out of the picture without force or violence. If only he hadn’t –

  The screen lit up with Proska’s grim, pinched features.

  “Well, well!” the little man said with genuine surprise. “What have we here? An eminent sector representative calling me on my humble vidphone! Such an honor!”

  “Never mind the feeble attempts at humor – it doesn’t become you. And there’s nothing humorous behind this call.”

  “Well?”

  “I’ve got an errand for you,” deBloise said and watched carefully for Proska’s reaction. He was going to cherish this – after seventeen years of catering to the monster’s every whim, at last he had a demand for him.

  But Proska remained impassive, only the slightest flicker of his dark-eyed gaze revealing anything untoward in the conversation. He waited in silence until deBloise was forced to go on.

  “You failed. The booth was psi-shielded, and a source at the hospital informs me that the investigator you were supposed to eliminate will regain consciousness before morning.”

  “Investigator? I thought you told me he was some sort of a reporter.”

  “That’s what I thought. That’s what customs thought. His identification was completely phony. I had a few of my contacts check with the Risden Service and they never heard of him. The name he used, however, was legitimate: he is Lawrence Easly, a private investigator who does a lot of work in the business sector.”

  “Business? Why would he be checking up on you?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t say he was exclusively an industrial spy. Besides, I’ve been aware that I’ve been under some sort of surveillance for a number of years now and perhaps he’s been behind it.”

  “But to what end?”

  “Very possibly he works for someone with political ambitions who’s preparing for the day when he meets me head-on and wants to store up a little dirt in advance.”

  “A potential blackmailer, then.”

  “Yes. Competition for you.”

  Proska’s smile was not a nice thing to see. “No one could know what I know, could they, Elson? Or if they did know, they couldn’t prove it like I can.”

  “That doesn’t matter right now! If I’m exposed… if even a hint of what happened in Danzer should leak out, I’ll be ruined. And that’ll mean the end of your meal ticket. So I expect you to go over to the hospital and finish the job!”

  “Dear Elson, how you’ve changed! I remember the horror and revulsion you expressed the first time I demonstrated my little specialty to you. And now you actually want me to use it twice on the same man!”

  Proska’s mocking observation stunned deBloise and his mind suddenly leaped back seventeen years to the day a lowly civil servant stood in his office – smaller and more sedate than the one he occupied these days – and told him he could “take care of the problem in Danzer.” DeBloise had summarily dismissed the man, but the memory of his eyes and his expression when be spoke remained with him.

  And when Tayes returned from Danzer a few days later with the news that Jeffers had capitulated and that the Vanek Equality Act would be as good as dead once word got out, deBloise knew he had to act immediately if he was to save anything. He contacted the little man and sent him to Danzer.

  The next morning, all of Jebinose was shaken by the news that the man who had been pushing the Vanek cause in Danzer was dead. And that the Vanek had confessed – as a group – to his murder. So it was a natural reaction for deBloise to laugh in Proska’s face when he showed up that afternoon demanding “compensation” for his services.

  Proska did something to him then… something horrible… a little taste of his “specialty,” as he liked to call it. And then he took him to the oldest, most run-down part of Copia, picked out a besotted derelict, and showed deBloise what happened when Cando Proska loosed the full force of his power on a man. But that wasn’t the end of the show. Next stop was Proska’s dim little flat where deBloise watched in horror as a vid recording showed him telling Proska to put an end to Junior Finch’s meddling in Danzer. He was watching a copy. The original would be released to the public should any mishap, even slightly suspicious, befall Proska.

  Cando Proska had been bleeding him ever since. And the thought of what Proska could do to him, politically and personally, had haunted him ever since, waking him in the night sweating, panting, and clawing at the air.

  “I never realized then what you intended to do,” he said hoarsely, snapping himself back to the present, “or what you could do.”

  “Would it have made any difference?” Proska sneered. “Finch showed the VEA to be a useless political charade. I saw that coming; that’s why I came to you. Because once he succeeded, support for your Vanek Equality Act would have evaporated. And if the VEA went down, so would you! You remember how you looked on that recording – you were ready to do anything. Anything!” His tone suddenly became businesslike. “Speaking of the recording, it now resides on Fed Central, addressed to the Federation ethics committee.”

  DeBloise’s face blanched and his voice shook. “Proska, I’d like to–”

  “I know what you’d like to do, that’s why the recording is where it is.”

  DeBloise struggled for control and finally regained it. After a long pause, he said, “Are you going to finish the job?”

  “Certainly. But I need a way to get into the hospital without attracting too much attention. I require a certain proximity, you know.”

  “That can be arranged. I’ll have my source at the hospital contact you. I’m leaving for Fed Central tonight. I hope everything is settled before my ship has made its first jump.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”

  Jo

  JO WAS DOZING LIGHTLY in a chair when the new head nurse came in during the changeover to the third shift and startled her to wakefulness.

  “Sorry if I surprised you, dear,” she said with a warm smile. “Just making my rounds.”

  She was older than most of the other nurses and seemed to have all her moves down to an almost unconscious routine. She checked the vital-signs contacts and gave Larry a long, careful look. Apparently satisfied
, she smiled and nodded to Jo, then left.

  The door was opened again a few moments later by a middle-aged orderly. He was short, sallow-skinned, and balding. He seemed unduly surprised to see Jo sitting by the bed.

  “I’m sorry, miss,” he said in a low voice, “but I’m going to prepare the patient for some final tests and you’ll have to step out for a few minutes.”

  Jo shot to her feet and started to reach for her pouch, then changed her mind. “What? Must I?”

  “I’m sorry… hospital rules.”

  “All right,” she said resignedly, and started for the door, swaying slightly with fatigue.

  When she passed behind the orderly, however, her whole demeanor changed. Her right hand shot into her hip pouch and pulled out a small but very deadly blaster. She had it pointed at the orderly’s head and was squeezing the trigger when his peripheral vision caught the movement. He turned–

  –and Jo had no body. At least that was the way it seemed. All tactile and proprioceptive impulses from her extremities and torso had been cut off. She was a head floating in the room. It was a sickening sensation. She could still use all her facial muscles and could move her eyes. Could she speak? She was afraid to try, afraid she’d only be able to scream. And she didn’t want to do that, not in front of this creature.

  “Not a fair play at all,” he said mockingly. Jo’s arm was still extended in front of her, the blaster still in her hand. He reached out casually and took it from her grasp. “Why would you want to blow a poor orderly’s head off?”

  Jo took a deep breath. At least she thought she did; there was no sensation of her chest expanding. She wasn’t sure she could keep herself from gibbering with fear, but she would try to speak.

  “I…” Her throat seemed to be closing; she swallowed and tried again. “I wanted to keep you from finishing what you started the other night.”

  Eyes wide, the little man moved closer. “How do you know about that?”