Now she was in a region of ambivalent drives, and of nebulous and stillborn wishes, anxieties, doubts interwoven with regressive beliefs and libido wishes of a fantastic nature. It was not a pleasant region but each person had it; she was accustomed to it, by now. This was what made her existence so rife with difficulty, running into this hostile area of the human mind. Each perception and observation which Dave Mutreaux had rejected in himself existed here, imperishable, living on in a kind of half-life, feeding deeply on his psychic energy.
He could not be held responsible for these, and yet there they were anyhow, semi-autonomous and—feral. Opposed to everything Mutreaux consciously, deliberately believed in. In opposition to all his life aims.
Much could be learned about Mutreaux’ psyche by this examination of what he chose to—or had to—reject from consciousness.
“The area in question,” Patricia said, “simply will not open up to scanning. Can you control it, Dave?”
Mutreaux said haltingly, a bewildered expression on his face, “I don’t understand what’s being discussed. Everything in me is open to you, as far as I know; I’m certainly not deliberately holding back.”
Now she had picked up the pre-cognitive region of Mutreaux’ mind, and by entering it she made herself, temporarily, a pre-cog; it was an eerie sensation to possess this talent as well as her customary one.
She saw, as if arranged in neat boxes, a supple, viable sequence of time-possibilities, each one obviating all the others, strung so as to be knowable simultaneously. It was pictorial, and oddly static rather than dramatic. Patricia saw herself, frozen in a variety of actions; some she blanched at—they were hideous, sequences in which she yielded to her most deranged suspicions and—
My own daughter, she thought bleakly. So it’s possible that I might do that to her, possible but not probable. The majority of sequences showed a rapprochement with Mary Anne, and a healing of the split within the organization rather than a widening. And yet—it could happen.
And, in addition, she saw in one swift instant a scene in which the telepaths within the organization pounced on Mutreaux. And Mutreaux himself certainly was aware of this; the scene after all existed in his consciousness. But why? Patricia wondered. What could he do that would warrant this? Or what could we discover?
Mutreaux’ thoughts became diffused, all at once.
“You’re evading,” Patricia said, and glanced at Merle and then at the other telepaths in the room. “It’s the arrival of Don,” she said to them. Don was the missing telepath, on his way now from Detroit; he would arrive any time. “In Mutreaux’ pre-cog area there’s a sequence in which Don will, on his arrival here, ferret out the inert area involved, will open and explore it. And—” She hesitated, but the three other telepaths had picked up her thought anyhow.
And will destroy Mutreaux because of it, she had thought.
But why? There was nothing to suggest the vuggish power about it or about him; this was something else, and it completely baffled her.
Was it certain that Don would do this? No, only probable. And how did Mutreaux feel, knowing this, knowing that his death was imminent? What did a pre-cog do under such circumstances?
The same as anyone else, she discovered as she scanned Mutreaux’ mind. The pre-cog ran.
Mutreaux, rising to his feet, said huskily, “I’ve got to get back to the New York Area I’m afraid.” His manner was easy, but inside the opposite. “Sorry I can’t stay,” he said to Rothman.
“Don is our best telepath,” Rothman said meditatively. “I’m going to have to ask you to remain until he gets here. Our only defense against the penetration of our organization is the existence of four telepaths who can dig in and tell us what’s going on. So you must sit down, Mutreaux.”
Mutreaux reseated himself.
Closing his eyes, Pete Garden listened to the discussion between Patricia McClain, Mutreaux and Rothman. This secret organization, composed of Psi-people, stands between us and the Titanian civilization, its domination over us or some such thing; his thoughts ran together muddily. He still had not recovered from last night and the manner in which he had been awakened this morning—that, and Hawthorne’s pointless, shocking death.
I wonder if Carol’s all right, Pete thought.
God, he thought, I wish I could get out of here. He thought of the moment when Mary Anne, through her psycho-kinetic talent, had made him a floating particle, and tossed him into and through the material wall of the room, and then somehow, for reasons unclear to him, had let him come back; she had changed her mind at the last instant.
I’m afraid of these people, he said to himself. Of them and their talents.
He opened his eyes.
In the motel room, discoursing in shrill, chattery voices, sat nine vugs. And one human being besides himself. Dave Mutreaux.
He and Dave Mutreaux, standing in opposition to the rest of them. Hopeless and impossible. He did not stir; he simply stared at the nine vugs.
One vug—it spoke in the voice of Patricia McClain—said agitatedly, “Rothman! I’ve picked up an incredible thought from Garden.”
“I have, too,” another vug said in agreement. “Garden perceives us all as—” It hesitated. “He sees us, with the exception of Mutreaux, as vugs.”
There was silence.
The vug which spoke as Rothman said, “Garden, this implies then that the penetration of our group is complete? Is that right? Complete with the exception of David Mutreaux, at least.”
Pete said nothing.
“How can we consider this,” the vug calling itself Rothman said, “and keep on being sane? We’ve already lost, if Garden’s perceptions are to be believed. We must try to consider rationally; possibly there’s some hope. What do you say, Mutreaux? If Garden is right, you’re the only authentic Terran among us.”
Mutreaux said, “I have no understanding of this.” He glanced at Pete. “Ask him, not me.”
“Well, Mr. Garden?” the vug Rothman said, calmly. “What do you say?”
“Please answer,” the Patricia McClain one pleaded. “Pete, in the name of all we hold holy—”
Pete said, “I think you know now what there is in Mutreaux that your telepaths couldn’t scan. He’s a human being and you’re not. That’s the difference. And when your last telepath gets here—”
“We’ll destroy Mutreaux,” the Rothman vug said slowly, thoughtfully.
13
Joseph Schilling said to the homeostatic informational circuit of the vidphone, “I want the attorney-at-law Laird Sharp. He’s somewhere on the West Coast; I don’t know any more than that.”
It was past noon, now. Pete Garden had not returned home and Joe Schilling knew that he was not going to. There was no point in contacting the other members of Pretty Blue Fox; Pete wasn’t with any of them. Whoever had taken him lay outside the group.
If this identity problem has actually been solved, he thought, if Pat and Al McClain did it, then why? And killing the detective Hawthorne, a mistake, whatever their reasons. No one could convince him of the rightness of such an action as that.
Going into the bedroom of the apartment he asked Carol, “How are you feeling?”
She sat by the window, wearing a gaily-colored cotton print dress, listlessly watching the street below. “I’m okay, Joe.”
The detective E.B. Black had temporarily gone out of the apartment, so Joe Schilling shut the bedroom door and said to Carol, “I know something about the McClains that the police aren’t to know.”
Raising her eyes, Carol regarded him. “Tell me.”
Joe Schilling said, “She’s mixed up in some kind of extralegal activity, has been apparently for some time. That would fit in with the murder of Hawthorne. I’ll make a guess; I think it’s connected with her being a Psi. And her husband, too. But other than that, and it isn’t much, I can’t account for them murdering, especially a police detective. Now look what they’ve got on their hands: a nation-wide search by all police agenci
es. They must be desperate.” Or fanatic, he thought to himself. “There’s no one the police hate more than a cop-killer,” he murmured. “It was a stupid thing to do.” Fanatic and stupid, he thought. A bad mixture.
The vidphone rang and said, “Your party, Mr. Schilling. The attorney Laird Sharp.”
Schilling at once snapped the screen on. “Laird,” he said. “Good.”
“What’s happened?” Sharp said.
“Your client’s gone, Pete Garden.” He explained, tersely, what had happened. “And I have an intuitive distrust of the police,” Schilling said. “For some reason it seems to me they’re not trying. Maybe it’s because of the vug, E.B. Black.” The instinctive aversion of the Terran was there, operating within himself, he realized.
Sharp said, “Um, let’s make a run up to Pocatello. What did you say the psychiatrist’s name is?”
“Philipson,” Joe Schilling said. “He’s world-famous. What do you expect to find up there?”
“I don’t know,” Sharp said. “After all, I’m getting everything third-hand, but I have a hunch. I’ll fly to San Rafael and meet you there; stay put for another ten minutes. I’m in San Francisco.”
“Right,” Schilling said, and broke the connection.
“Where are you going?” Carol asked him as he started for the door of the apartment. “You told Pete’s attorney you’d meet him here.”
“I’m going to get a gun,” Schilling said. He shut the door after him and hurried down the hall. I only need one, he realized. Because if I know Laird Sharp he’s carrying his own at all times.
As he and Sharp flew northeast in Sharp’s car, Schilling said, “On the vid last night Pete said some strange things. First, that this situation was going to kill Pete, as it had killed Luckman. That he should be especially careful of Carol’s safety. And—” He glanced at Sharp. “Pete said that Doctor Philipson is a vug.”
“So?” Sharp said. “There are vugs all over the planet.”
“But I know something about Philipson,” Joe Schilling said. “I’ve read his articles and read about his therapeutic techniques. There’s never been any mention of him being a Titanian. Something’s wrong. I don’t think Pete saw Doctor Philipson; I think he saw someone or something else. A man of Philipson’s stature wouldn’t be available in the middle of the night, like a common GP. And where did Pete get the one hundred and fifty dollars he remembers paying Philipson? I know Pete; he never carries money on him. No Bindman does; they think in terms of real estate deeds, not cash. Money is for us non-B’s.”
“Did he actually say he had paid this doctor? Possibly he simply ran up a bill for that amount.”
“Pete said that he had paid him, and paid him last night. And he said he’d gotten his money’s worth.” Joe Schilling brooded about it for a moment. “In Pete’s condition, drunk and drug-stimulated and in a manic phase because of Carol’s pregnancy, he wouldn’t have known what he really saw, if it actually was Philipson or not that sat facing him. And it’s always possible that he hallucinated the entire episode. That he never went to Pocatello at all.” He got out his pipe and his pouch of tobacco. “The whole episode doesn’t ring right. Pete may be one sick cookie; that may be the root of the whole problem.”
“What do you use in your pipe these days?” Sharp asked. “Still nothing but white burley, rough-cut?”
“Not any more. This is a mixture called Barking Dog. It never bites.”
Sharp grinned briefly.
At the outskirts of Pocatello Doctor Philipson’s psychiatric clinic lay below, a square of dazzling white surrounded by lawns and trees, and in the rear, a rose garden. Sharp landed his car on the gravel driveway and continued by surface up into the parking lot at the side of the large central building. The place, quiet and well-tended, seemed deserted. The only car in the parking lot appeared to be Doctor Philipson’s own.
Peaceful, Schilling thought. But obviously it’s enormously expensive to come here. The rose garden attracted him and he meandered toward it, sniffing the air and smelling the deep, heavy scent of roses and organic fertilizers. A sprinkler, homeostatic and efficient, rotated as it watered a lawn, causing him to step from the path and onto the thick, springy grass itself. Just being here would cure me, he thought. Getting the smells, feeling the textures of the pastoral community. Ahead he saw tied to a post a nodding gray donkey.
“Look,” he said to Laird Sharp, who had followed behind him. “Two of the finest roses ever developed. Peace and Star of Holland. In the twentieth century the were rated something like nine points in rose-growing circles.” He explained, “Nine was extremely good. And then of course they developed the more modern patented rose, Space Voyager” He pointed to it, the huge orange and white buds. “And Our Land.” That was a red, so dark as to be virtually black, with spatters of lighter dots across the petals.
While they were inspecting Our Land, the door of the clinic building flew open and a bald, friendly-looking elderly man stepped out, smiling at them in greeting. “Can I help you?” he asked, eyes twinkling.
Sharp said, “We’re looking for Doctor Philipson.”
“That’s I,” the elderly man said. “I’m afraid the rose garden needs spraying; I see grefi on several bushes.” He brushed at a leaf with the side of his hand. “Grefi, a mite that slipped in here from Mars.”
Joe Schilling said, “Where can we go that we could talk to you?”
“Right here,” Doctor Philipson said. “Did a Mr. Peter Garden visit you late last night?” Schilling asked.
“He certainly did.” Doctor Philipson smiled wryly. “And vidphoned me even later.”
“Pete Garden has been kidnapped,” Schilling said. “His abductors killed a policeman on the way, so they must be serious.”
The smile on Doctor Philipson’s face vanished. “That so.” He glanced at Schilling and then at Laird Sharp. “I was worried about something on this order. First Jerome Luckman’s death, now followed by this. Come in.” He held the door to the clinic building open, then abruptly changed his mind. “Perhaps it would be better if we sat in the car. So no one overhears.” He led the way back to the parking lot. “There are several matters I’d like to discuss with you.”
Presently the three of them were seated tensely in Doctor Philipson’s car.
“What’s your relationship to Peter Garden?” the doctor asked.
Schilling, briefly, told him.
“Probably,” Philipson said, “you’ll never see Garden alive again. I’m deeply sorry to say that, but it’s almost certainly the truth. I tried to warn him.”
“I know that,” Schilling said. “He told me.”
“I knew too little about Pete Garden,” the doctor said. “I’d never seen him before in my life; I couldn’t get an accurate background history from him because last night he was drunk and sick and scared. He phoned me at my home; I had gone to bed. I met him in downtown Pocatello at a bar. I forget the name of it, now. It was a bar at which he had stopped. He had an attractive young girl with him but she didn’t come in. Garden was actively hallucinating and needed major psychiatric help. I could scarcely supply that to him in the middle of the night at a bar, needless to say.”
“His fear,” Joe Schilling said, “was of the vugs. Pete believed they were—closing in on us.”
“Yes, I realize that. He expressed those fears last night to me. A number of times in a variety of ways. It was touching. At one point he very laboriously scratched himself a message on a match folder and hid it—with great ceremony—in his shoe. The vugs are after us,’ it said, or words to that effect.” The doctor eyed Schilling and Laird Sharp. “What do you know, at this moment, about the internal problems on Titan?”
Taken by surprise, Joe Schilling said, “Not a damn thing.”
Doctor Philipson said, “Titan civilization is sharply divided into two factions. The reason I know this is simple; I have, in the clinic here, several Titanians who hold high posts here on Earth. They’re undergoing psychiatric treatmen
t with me. It’s somewhat unorthodox, but I discover I can work with them well enough.”
Alertly, Sharp said, “Is that why you wanted to talk here in the car?”
“Yes,” Philipson said. “Here, we’re out of range of their telepathic ability. All four of them are moderates, politically speaking. That’s the dominant force in Titan politics and has been for decades. But there is also a war party, a faction of extremists. Their power has been growing, but no one, including the Titanians themselves, seems to know precisely how strong they’ve become. In any case, their policy toward Terra is hostile. I have a theory. I can’t prove this, but I’ve hinted at it in several papers I’ve done.” He paused. “I think—just think, mind you—that the Titanians, on the instigation of their war party elements, are tinkering with our birth rate. On some technological level—don’t ask me quite how—they’re responsible for holding our birth rate down.”
There was silence. A long, strained one.
“As far as Luckman goes,” Doctor Philipson said, “I’d guess that he was killed either directly or indirectly by Titanians, but not for the reason you think. True, he had just come out to California after sewing up the East Coast thoroughly. True, he probably would have assumed economic domination of California as he did with New York. But that was not why the Titanians killed him. It was because they had been trying to get to him probably for months, possibly even years; when Luckman left the sanctuary of his organization and came out to Carmel where he had no pre-cogs, no human Psi-people to protect him—”
“Why’d they kill him?” Sharp asked quietly.
“Because of his luck,” the Doctor replied. “His fertility. His ability to have children. That’s what menaces the Titanians. Not his success at The Game; they don’t give a god damn about that.”