The Project Gutenberg EBook of That Sweet Little Old Lady, by
Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
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Title: That Sweet Little Old Lady
Author: Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
Illustrator: Kelly Freas
Release Date: November 29, 2007 [EBook #23657]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THAT SWEET LITTLE OLD LADY ***
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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Astounding Science Fiction_ September
and October 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor
spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Subscript characters are shown within {braces}.
[Illustration: That Sweet Little Old Lady]
_Usually, the
toughest part of the job is stating the
problem clearly, and the solution is then
easy. This time the FBI could state the
problem easily; solving it, though was
not. How do you catch a telepathic spy?_
BY MARK PHILLIPS
Illustrated by Freas
_"What are we going to call that sweet little old lady, now that_
mother _is a dirty word?"_
--_Dave Foley_
I
In 1914, it was enemy aliens.
In 1930, it was Wobblies.
In 1957, it was fellow travelers.
And, in 1971....
"They could be anywhere," Andrew J. Burris said, with an expression
which bordered on exasperated horror. "They could be all around us.
Heaven only knows."
He pushed his chair back from his desk and stood up--a chunky little man
with bright blue eyes and large hands. He paced to the window and looked
out at Washington, and then he came back to the desk. A persistent
office rumor held that he had become head of the FBI purely because he
happened to have an initial _J_ in his name, but in his case the _J_
stood for Jeremiah. And, at the moment, his tone expressed all the
hopelessness of that Old Testament prophet's lamentations.
"We're helpless," he said, looking at the young man with the crisp brown
hair who was sitting across the desk. "That's what it is, we're
helpless."
Kenneth Malone tried to look dependable. "Just tell me what to do," he
said.
"You're a good agent, Kenneth," Burris said. "You're one of the best.
That's why you've been picked for this job. And I want to say that I
picked you personally. Believe me, there's never been anything like it
before."
"I'll do my best," Malone said at random. He was twenty-eight, and he
had been an FBI agent for three years. In that time, he had, among other
things, managed to break up a gang of smugglers, track down a
counterfeiting ring, and capture three kidnapers. For reasons which he
could neither understand nor explain, no one seemed willing to attribute
his record to luck.
"I know you will," Burris said. "And if anybody can crack this case,
Malone, you're the man. It's just that--everything sounds so
_impossible_. Even after all the conferences we've had."
"Conferences?" Malone said vaguely. He wished the chief would get to the
point. Any point. He smiled gently across the desk and tried to look
competent and dependable and reassuring. Burris' expression didn't
change.
"You'll get the conference tapes later," Burris said. "You can study
them before you leave. I suggest you study them very carefully, Malone.
Don't be like me. Don't get confused." He buried his face in his hands.
Malone waited patiently. After a few seconds, Burris looked up. "Did you
read books when you were a child?" he asked.
Malone said: "What?"
"Books," Burris said. "When you were a child. Read them."
"Sure I did," Malone said. "'Bomba the Jungle Boy,' and 'Doolittle,' and
'Lucky Starr,' and 'Little Women'--"
"'Little Women'?"
"When Beth died," Malone said, "I wanted to cry. But I didn't. My father
said big boys don't cry."
"And your father was right," Burris said. "Why, when I was a ... never
mind. Forget about Beth and your father. Think about 'Lucky Starr' for a
minute. Remember him?"
"Sure," Malone said. "I liked those books. You know, it's funny, but the
books you read when you're a kid, they kind of stay with you. Know what
I mean? I can still remember that one about Venus, for instance. Gee,
that was--"
"Never mind about Venus, too," Burris said sharply. "Keep your mind on
the problem."
"Yes, sir," Malone said. He paused. "What problem, sir?" he added.
"The problem we're discussing," Burris said. He gave Malone a bright,
blank stare. "Just listen to me."
"Yes, sir."
"All right, then." Burris took a deep breath. He seemed nervous. Once
again he stood up and went to the window. This time, he spoke without
turning. "Remember how everybody used to laugh about spaceships, and
orbital satellites, and life on other planets? That was just in those
'Lucky Starr' books. That was all just for kids, wasn't it?"
"Well, I don't know," Malone said slowly.
"Sure it was all for kids," Burris said. "It was laughable. Nobody took
it seriously."
"Well, _somebody_ must--"
"You just keep quiet and listen," Burris said.
"Yes, sir," Malone said.
Burris nodded. His hands were clasped behind his back. "We're not
laughing any more, are we, Malone?" he said without moving.
There was silence.
"Well, are we?"
"Did you want me to answer, sir?"
"Of course I did!" Burris snapped.
"You told me to keep quiet and--"
"Never mind what I told you," Burris said. "Just do what I told you."
"Yes, sir," Malone said. "No, sir," he added after a second.
"No, sir, what?" Burris asked softly.
"No, sir, we're not laughing any more," Malone said.
"Ah," Burris said. "And why aren't we laughing any more?"
There was a little pause. Malone said, tentatively: "Because there's
nothing to laugh about, sir?"
Burris whirled. "On the head!" he said happily. "You've hit the nail on
the head, Kenneth. I knew I could depend on you." His voice grew serious
again, and thoughtful. "We're not laughing any more because there's
nothing to laugh about. We have orbital satellites, and we've landed on
the Moon with an atomic rocket. The planets are the next step, and after
that the stars. Man's heritage, Kenneth. The stars. And the stars,
Kenneth, belong to Man--not to the Soviets!"
"Yes, sir," Malone said soberly.
"So," Burris said, "we should learn not to laugh any more. But have we?"
"I don't know, sir."
"We haven't," Burris said with decision. "Can you read my mind?"
"No, sir," Malone said.
"Can I read your mind?"
Malone hesitated. At last he said: "Not that I know of, sir."
"Well, I can't," Burris snapped. "And can any of us read each other's
mind?"
Malone shook his head. "No, sir," he said.
Burris nodded. "That's the problem," he said. "That's the case I'm
sending you out to crack."
This time, the silence was a long one.
At last, Malone said: "What problem, sir?"
"Mind reading," Burris said. "There's a spy at work in the Nevada plant,
Kenneth. And the spy is a telepath."
* * * * *
The video tapes were very clear and very complete. There were a great
many of them, and it was long after nine o'clock when Kenneth Malone
decided to take a break and get some fresh air. Washington was a good
city for walking, even at night, and Malone liked to walk. Sometimes he
pretended, even to himself, that he got his best ideas while walking,
but he knew perfectly well that wasn't true. His best ideas just seemed
to come to him, out of nowhere, precisely as the situation demanded
them.
He was just lucky, that was all. He had a talent for being lucky. But
nobody would ever believe that. A record like his was spectacular, even
in the annals of the FBI, and Burris himself believed that the record
showed some kind of superior ability.
Malone knew that wasn't true, but what could he do about it? After all,
he didn't want to resign, did he? It was kind of romantic and exciting
to be an FBI agent, even after three years. A man got a chance to travel
around a lot and see things, and it was interesting. The pay was pretty
good, too.
The only trouble was that, if he didn't quit, he was going to have to
find a telepath.
The notion of telepathic spies just didn't sound right to Malone. It
bothered him in a remote sort of way. Not that the idea of telepathy
itself was alien to him--after all, he was even more aware than the
average citizen that research had been going on in that field for
something over a quarter of a century, and that the research was even
speeding up.
But the cold fact that a telepathy-detecting device had been invented
somehow shocked his sense of propriety, and his notions of privacy. It
wasn't decent, that was all.
There ought to be something sacred, he told himself angrily.
He stopped walking and looked up. He was on Pennsylvania Avenue, heading
toward the White House.
That was no good. He went to the corner and turned off, down the block.
He had, he told himself, nothing at all to see the President about.
Not yet, anyhow.
The streets were dark and very peaceful. _I get my best ideas while
walking_, Malone said without convincing himself. He thought back to the
video tapes.
The report on the original use of the machine itself had been on one of
the first tapes, and Malone could still see and hear it. That was one
thing he did have, he reflected; his memory was pretty good.
Burris had been the first speaker on the tapes, and he'd given the
serial and reference number in a cold, matter-of-fact voice. His face
had been perfectly blank, and he looked just like the head of the FBI
people were accustomed to seeing on their TV and newsreel screens.
Malone wondered what had happened to him between the time the tapes had
been made and the time he'd sent for Malone.
Maybe the whole notion of telepathy was beginning to get him, Malone
thought.
Burris recited the standard tape opening in a rapid mumble: "Any person
or agent unauthorized for this tape please refrain from viewing further,
under penalties as prescribed by law." Then he looked off, out past the
screen to the left, and said: "Dr. Thomas O'Connor, of Westinghouse
Laboratories. Will you come here, Dr. O'Connor?"
Dr. O'Connor came into the lighted square of screen slowly, looking all
around him. "This is very fascinating," he said, blinking in the
lamplight. "I hadn't realized that you people took so many
precautions--"
He was, Malone thought, somewhere between fifty and sixty, tall and thin
with skin so transparent that he nearly looked like a living X ray. He
had pale blue eyes and pale white hair and, Malone thought, if there
ever were a contest for the best-looking ghost, Dr. Thomas O'Connor
would win it hands--or phalanges--down.
"This is all necessary for the national security," Burris said, a little
sternly.
"Oh," Dr. O'Connor said quickly, "I realize that, of course. Naturally.
I can certainly see that."
"Let's go ahead, shall we?" Burris said.
O'Connor nodded. "Certainly. Certainly."
Burris said: "Well, then," and paused. After a second he started again:
"Now, Dr. O'Connor, would you please give us a sort of verbal run-down
on this for our records?"
"Of course," Dr. O'Connor said. He smiled into the video cameras and
cleared his throat. "I take it you don't want an explanation of how
this machine works. I mean: you don't want a technical exposition, do
you?"
"No," Burris said, and added: "Not by any means. Just tell us what it
does."
* * * * *
Dr. O'Connor suddenly reminded Malone of a professor he'd had in college
for one of the law courses. He had, Malone thought, the same smiling
gravity of demeanor, the same condescending attitude of absolute
authority. It was clear that Dr. O'Connor lived in a world of his own, a
world that was not even touched by the common run of men.
"Well," he began, "to put it very simply, the device indicates whether
or not a man's mental ... ah ... processes are being influenced by
outside ... by outside influences." He gave the cameras another little
smile. "If you will allow me, I will demonstrate on the machine itself."
He took two steps that carried him out of camera range, and returned
wheeling a large heavy-looking box. Dangling from the metal covering
were a number of wires and attachments. A long cord led from the box to
the floor, and snaked out of sight to the left.
"Now," Dr. O'Connor said. He selected a single lead, apparently, Malone
thought, at random. "This electrode--"
"Just a moment, doctor," Burris said. He was eying the machine with a
combination of suspicion and awe. "A while back you mentioned something
about 'outside influences.' Just what, specifically, does that mean?"
With some regret, Dr. O'Connor dropped the lead. "Telepathy," he said.
"By outside influences, I meant influences on the mind, such as
telepathy or mind reading of some nature."
"I see," Burris said. "You can detect a telepath with this machine."
"I'm afraid--"
"Well, some kind of a mind reader anyhow," Burris said. "We won't
quarrel about terms."
"Certainly not," Dr. O'Connor said. The smile he turned on Burris was as
cold and empty as the inside of Orbital Station One. "What I meant was
... if you will permit me to continue ... that we cannot detect any sort
of telepath or mind reader with this device. To be frank, I very much
wish that we could; it would make everything a great deal simpler.
However, the laws of psionics don't seem to operate that way."
"Well, then," Burris said, "what does the thing do?" His face wore a
mask of confusion. Momentarily, Malone felt sorry for his chief. He
could remember how he'd felt, himself, when that law professor had come
up with a particularly baffling question in class.
"This machine," Dr. O'Connor said with authority, "detects the slight
variations in mental activity that occur when a person's mind is _being_
read."
"You mean, if my mind were being read right now--"
"Not right now," Dr. O'Connor said. "You see, the bulk of this machine
is in Nevada; the structure is both too heavy and too delicate for
transport. And there are other qualifications--"
"I meant theoretically," Burris said.
"Theoretically," Dr. O'Connor began, and smiled again, "if your mind
were being read, this machine would detect it, supposing that the
machine were in operating condition and all of the other qualifications
had been met. You see, Mr. Burris, no matter how poor a telepath a man
may be, he has some slight ability--even if only very slight--to detect
the fact that his mind is being read."
"You mean, if somebody were reading my mind, I'd know it?" Burris said.
His face showed, Malone realized, that he plainly disbelieved this
statement.
"You would know it," Dr. O'Connor said, "but you would never know you
knew it. To elucidate: in a normal person--like you, for instance, or
even like myself--the state of having one's mind read merely results in
a vague, almost subconscious feeling of irritation, something that could
easily be attributed to minor worries, or fluctuations in one's hormonal
balance. The hormonal balance, Mr. Burris, is--"
"Thank you," Burris said with a trace of irritation. "I know what
hormones are."
"Ah. Good," Dr. O'Connor said equably. "In any case, to continue: this
machine interprets those specific feelings as indications that the mind
is being ... ah ... 'eavesdropped' upon."
You could almost see the quotation marks around what Dr. O'Connor
considered slang dropping into place, Malone thought.
* * * * *
"I see," Burris said with a disappointed air. "But what do you mean, it
won't detect a telepath? Have you ever actually worked with a telepath?"
"Certainly we have," Dr. O'Connor said. "If we hadn't, how would we be
able to tell that the machine was, in fact, indicating the presence of
telepathy? The theoretical state of the art is not, at present,
sufficiently developed to enable us to--"
"I see," Burris said hurriedly. "Only wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"You mean you've actually got a real mind reader? You've found one? One
that works?"
Dr. O'Connor shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid I should have said, Mr.
Burris, that we did once have one," he admitted. "He was, unfortunately,
an imbecile, with a mental age between five and six, as nearly as we
were able to judge."
"An imbecile?" Burris said. "But how were you able to--"
"He could repeat a person's thoughts word for word," Dr. O'Connor said.
"Of course, he was utterly incapable of understanding the meaning behind
them. That didn't matter; he simply repeated whatever you were
thinking. Rather disconcerting."
"I'm sure," Burris said. "But he was really an imbecile? There wasn't
any chance of--"
"Of curing him?" Dr. O'Connor said. "None, I'm afraid. We did at one
time feel that there had been a mental breakdown early in the boy's
life, and, indeed, it's perfectly possible that he was normal for the
first year or so. The records we did manage to get on that period,
however, were very much confused, and there was never any way of telling
anything at all, for certain. It's easy to see what caused the
confusion, of course: telepathy in an imbecile is rather an oddity--and
any normal adult would probably be rather hesitant about admitting that
he was capable of it. That's why we have not found another subject; we
must merely sit back and wait for lightning to strike."
Burris sighed. "I see your problem," he said. "But what happened to this
imbecile boy of yours?"
"Very sad," Dr. O'Connor said. "Six months ago, at the age of fifteen,
the boy simply died. He simply--gave up, and died."
"Gave up?"
"That was as good an explanation as our medical department was able to
provide, Mr. Burris. There was some malfunction, but--we like to say
that he simply gave up. Living became too difficult for him."
"All right," Burris said after a pause. "This telepath of yours is dead,
and there aren't any more where he came from. Or if there are, you don't
know how to look for them. All right. But to get back to this machine of
yours: it couldn't detect the boy's ability?"
Dr. O'Connor shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. We've worked hard on
that problem at Westinghouse, Mr. Burris, but we haven't yet been able
to find a method of actually detecting telepaths."
"But you can detect--"
"That's right," Dr. O'Connor said. "We can detect the fact that a man's
mind is being read." He stopped, and his face became suddenly morose.
When he spoke again, he sounded guilty, as if he were making an
admission that pained him. "Of course, Mr. Burris, there's nothing we
can _do_ about a man's mind being read. Nothing whatever." He essayed a
grin that didn't look very healthy. "But at least," he said, "you know
you're being spied on."
Burris grimaced. There was a little silence while Dr. O'Connor stroked
the metal box meditatively, as if it were the head of his beloved.
At last, Burris said: "Dr. O'Connor, how sure can you be of all this?"
The look he received made all the previous conversation seem as warm and
friendly as a Christmas party by comparison. It was a look that froze
the air of the room into a solid chunk, Malone thought, a chunk you
could have chipped pieces from, for souvenirs, later, when Dr. O'Connor
had gone and you could get into the room without any danger of being
quick-frozen by the man's unfriendly eye.
"Mr. Burris," Dr. O'Connor said in a voice that matched the temperature
of his gaze, "please. Remember our slogan."
* * * * *
Malone sighed. He fished in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, found
one, and extracted a single cigarette. He stuck it in his mouth and
started fishing in various pockets for his lighter.
He sighed again. He preferred cigars, a habit he'd acquired from the
days when he'd filched them from his father's cigar case, but his mental
picture of the fearless and alert young FBI agent didn't include a
cigar. Somehow, remembering his father as neither fearless nor, exactly,
alert--anyway, not the way the movies and the TV screens liked to
picture the words--he had the impression that cigars looked out of place
on FBI agents.
And it was, in any case, a small sacrifice to make. He found his lighter
and shielded it from the brisk wind. He looked out over water at the
Jefferson Memorial, and was surprised that he'd managed to walk as far
as he had. Then he stopped thinking about walking, and took a puff of
his cigarette, and forced himself to think about the job in hand.
Naturally, the Westinghouse gadget had been declared Ultra Top Secret as
soon as it had been worked out. Virtually everything was, these days.
And the whole group involved in the machine and its workings had been
transferred without delay to the United States Laboratories out in Yucca
Flats, Nevada.
Out there in the desert, there just wasn't much to do, Malone supposed,
except to play with the machine. And, of course, look at the scenery.
But when you've seen one desert, Malone thought confusedly, you've seen
them all.
So, the scientists ran experiments on the machine, and they made a
discovery of a kind they hadn't been looking for.
Somebody, they discovered, was picking the brains of the scientists
there.
Not the brains of the people working with the telepathy machine.
And not the brains of the people working on the several other
Earth-limited projects at Yucca Flats.
They'd been reading the minds of some of the scientists working on the
new and highly classified non-rocket space drive.
In other words, the Yucca Flats plant was infested with a telepathic
spy. And how do you go about finding a telepath? Malone sighed. Spies
that got information in any of the usual ways were tough enough to
locate. A telepathic spy was a lot tougher proposition.
Well, one thing about Andrew J. Burris--he had an answer for everything.
Malone thought of what his chief had said: "It takes a thief to catch a
thief. And if the Westinghouse machine won't locate a telepathic spy, I
know what will."
"What?" Malone had asked.
"It's simple," Burris had said. "Another telepath. There has to be one
around somewhere. Westinghouse _did_ have one, after all, and the
Russians _still_ have one. Malone, that's your job: go out and find me a
telepath."
Burris had an answer for everything, all right, Malone thought. But he
couldn't see where the answer did him very much good. After all, if it
takes a telepath to catch a telepath, how do you catch the telepath
you're going to use to catch the first telepath?
[Illustration]
Malone ran that through his mind again, and then gave it up. It sounded
as if it should have made sense, somehow, but it just didn't, and that
was all there was to that.
He dropped his cigarette to the ground and mashed it out with the toe
of his shoe. Then he looked up.
Out there, over the water, was the Jefferson Memorial. It stood, white
in the floodlights, beautiful and untouchable in the darkness. Malone
stared at it. What would Thomas Jefferson have done in a crisis like
this?
Jefferson, he told himself without much conviction, would have been just
as confused as he was.
But he'd have had to find a telepath, Malone thought. Malone determined
that he would do likewise. If Thomas Jefferson could do it, the least
he, Malone, could do was to give it a good try.
There was only one little problem:
_Where_, Malone thought, _do I start looking?_
II
Early the next morning, Malone awoke on a plane, heading across the
continent toward Nevada. He had gone home to sleep, and he'd had to wake
up to get on the plane, and now here he was, waking up again. It seemed,
somehow, like a vicious circle.
The engines hummed gently as they pushed the big ship through the middle
stratosphere's thinly distributed molecules. Malone looked out at the
purple-dark sky and set himself to think out his problem again.
He was still mulling things over when the ship lowered its landing gear
and rolled to a stop on the big field near Yucca Flats. Malone sighed
and climbed slowly out of his seat. There was a car waiting for him at
the airfield, though, and that seemed to presage a smooth time; Malone
remembered calling Dr. O'Connor the night before, and congratulated
himself on his foresight.
Unfortunately, when he reached the main gate of the high double fence
that surrounded the more than ninety square miles of United States
Laboratories, he found out that entrance into that sanctum sanctorum of
Security wasn't as easy as he'd imagined--not even for an FBI man. His
credentials were checked with the kind of minute care Malone had always
thought people reserved for disputed art masterpieces, and it was with a
great show of reluctance that the Special Security guards passed him
inside as far as the office of the Chief Security Officer.
There, the Chief Security Officer himself, a man who could have doubled
for Torquemada, eyed Malone with ill-concealed suspicion while he called
Burris at FBI headquarters back in Washington.
Burris identified Malone on the video screen and the Chief Security
Officer, looking faintly disappointed, stamped the agent's pass and
thanked the FBI chief. Malone had the run of the place.
Then he had to find a courier jeep. The Westinghouse division, it
seemed, was a good two miles away.
As Malone knew perfectly well, the main portion of the entire Yucca
Flats area was devoted solely to research on the new space drive which
was expected to make the rocket as obsolete as the blunderbuss--at least
as far as space travel was concerned. Not, Malone thought uneasily, that
the blunderbuss had ever been used for space travel, but--
He got off the subject hurriedly. The jeep whizzed by buildings, most of
them devoted to aspects of the non-rocket drive. The other projects
based at Yucca Flats had to share what space was left--and that
included, of course, the Westinghouse research project.
It turned out to be a single, rather small white building with a fence
around it. The fence bothered Malone a little, but there was no need to
worry; this time he was introduced at once into Dr. O'Connor's office.
It was paneled in wallpaper manufactured to look like pine, and the
telepathy expert sat behind a large black desk bigger than any Malone
had ever seen in the FBI offices. There wasn't a scrap of paper on the
desk; its surface was smooth and shiny, and behind it the nearly
transparent Dr. Thomas O'Connor was close to invisible.
He looked, in person, just about the same as he'd looked on the FBI
tapes. Malone closed the door of the office behind him, looked for a
chair and didn't find one. In Dr. O'Connor's office, it was perfectly
obvious, Dr. O'Connor sat down. You stood, and were uncomfortable.
* * * * *
Malone took off his hat. He reached across the desk to shake hands with
the telepathy expert, and Dr. O'Connor gave him a limp and fragile paw.
"Thanks for giving me a little time," Malone said. "I really appreciate
it." He smiled across the desk. His feet were already beginning to hurt.
"Not at all," Dr. O'Connor said, returning the smile with one of his own
special quick-frozen brand. "I realize how important FBI work is to all
of us, Mr. Malone. What can I do to help you?"
Malone shifted his feet. "I'm afraid I wasn't very specific on the phone
last night," he said. "It wasn't anything I wanted to discuss over a
line that might have been tapped. You see, I'm on the telepathy case."
Dr. O'Connor's eyes widened the merest trifle. "I see," he said. "Well,
I'll certainly do everything I can to help you."
"Fine," Malone said. "Let's get right down to business, then. The first
thing I want to ask you about is this detector of yours. I understand
it's too big to carry around--but how about making a smaller model?"
"Smaller?" Dr. O'Connor permitted himself a ghostly chuckle. "I'm afraid
that isn't possible, Mr. Malone. I would be happy to let you have a
small model of the machine if we had one available--more than happy. I
would like to see such a machine myself, as a matter of fact.
Unfortunately, Mr. Malone--"
"There just isn't one, right?" Malone said.
"Correct," Dr. O'Connor said. "And there are a few other factors. In the
first place, the person being analyzed has to be in a specially shielded
room, such as is used in encephalographic analysis. Otherwise, the
mental activity of the other persons around him would interfere with the
analysis." He frowned a little. "I wish that we knew a bit more about
psionic machines. The trouble with the present device, frankly, is that
it is partly psionic and partly electronic, and we can't be entirely
sure where one part leaves off and the other begins. Very trying. Very
trying indeed."
"I'll bet it is," Malone said sympathetically, wishing he understood
what Dr. O'Connor was talking about.
The telepathy expert sighed. "However," he said, "we keep working at
it." Then he looked at Malone expectantly.
Malone shrugged. "Well, if I can't carry the thing around, I guess
that's that," he said. "But here's the next question: Do you happen to
know the maximum range of a telepath? I mean: How far away can he get
from another person and still read his mind?"
Dr. O'Connor frowned again. "We don't have definite information on that,
I'm afraid," he said. "Poor little Charlie was rather difficult to work
with. He was mentally incapable of co-operating in any way, you see."
"Little Charlie?"
"Charles O'Neill was the name of the telepath we worked with," Dr.
O'Connor explained.
"I remember," Malone said. The name had been on one of the tapes, but he
just hadn't associated "Charles O'Neill" with "Little Charlie." He felt
as if he'd been caught with his homework undone. "How did you manage to
find him, anyway?" he said. Maybe, if he knew how Westinghouse had found
their imbecile-telepath, he'd have some kind of clue that would enable
him to find one, too. Anyhow, it was worth a try.
"It wasn't difficult in Charlie's case," Dr. O'Connor said. He smiled.
"The child babbled all the time, you see."
"You mean he talked about being a telepath?"
Dr. O'Connor shook his head impatiently. "No," he said. "Not at all. I
mean that he babbled. Literally. Here: I've got a sample recording in my
files." He got up from his chair and went to the tall gray filing
cabinet that hid in a far corner of the pine-paneled room. From a drawer
he extracted a spool of common audio tape, and returned to his desk.
"I'm sorry we didn't get full video on this," he said, "but we didn't
feel it was necessary." He opened a panel in the upper surface of the
desk, and slipped the spool in. "If you like, there are other tapes--"
"Maybe later," Malone said.
* * * * *
Dr. O'Connor nodded and pressed the playback switch at the side of the
great desk. For a second the room was silent.
Then there was the hiss of empty tape, and a brisk masculine voice that
overrode it:
"Westinghouse Laboratories," it said, "sixteen April nineteen-seventy.
Dr. Walker speaking. The voice you are about to hear belongs to Charles
O'Neill: chronological age fourteen years, three months; mental age,
approximately five years. Further data on this case will be found in the
file _O'Neill_."
There was a slight pause, filled with more tape hiss.
Then the voice began.
"... push the switch for record ... in the park last Wednesday ... and
perhaps a different set of ... poor kid never makes any sense in ...
trees and leaves all sunny with the ... electronic components of the
reducing stage might be ... not as predictable when others are around
but ... to go with Sally some night in the...."
It was a childish, alto voice, gabbling in a monotone. A phrase would be
spoken, the voice would hesitate for just an instant, and then another,
totally disconnected phrase would come. The enunciation and
pronunciation would vary from phrase to phrase, but the tone remained
essentially the same, drained of all emotional content.
"... in receiving psychocerebral impulses there isn't any ... nonsense
and nothing but nonsense all the ... tomorrow or maybe Saturday with the
girl ... tube might be replaceable only if ... something ought to be
done for the ... Saturday would be a good time for ... work on the
schematics tonight if...."
There was a click as the tape was turned off, and Dr. O'Connor looked
up.
"It doesn't make much sense," Malone said. "But the kid sure has a hell
of a vocabulary for an imbecile."
"Vocabulary?" Dr. O'Connor said softly.
"That's right," Malone said. "Where'd an imbecile get words like
'psychocerebral'? I don't think I know what that means, myself."
"Ah," Dr. O'Connor said. "But that's not _his_ vocabulary, you see. What
Charlie is doing is simply repeating the thoughts of those around him.
He jumps from mind to mind, simply repeating whatever he receives." His
face assumed the expression of a man remembering a bad taste in his
mouth. "That's how we found him out, Mr. Malone," he said. "It's rather
startling to look at a blithering idiot and have him suddenly repeat the
very thought that's in your mind."
Malone nodded unhappily. It didn't seem as if O'Connor's information was
going to be a lot of help as far as catching a telepath was concerned.
An imbecile, apparently, would give himself away if he were a telepath.
But nobody else seemed to be likely to do that. And imbeciles didn't
look like very good material for catching spies with.
Then he brightened. "Is it possible that the spy we're looking for
really isn't a spy?"
"Eh?"
"I mean, suppose he's an imbecile, too? I doubt whether an imbecile
would really be a spy, if you see what I mean."
Dr. O'Connor appeared to consider the notion. After a little while he
said: "It is, I suppose, possible. But the readings on the machine don't
give us the same timing as they did in Charlie's case--or even the same
sort of timing."
"I don't quite follow you," Malone said. Truthfully, he felt about three
miles behind. But perhaps everything would clear up soon. He hoped so.
On top of everything else, his feet were now hurting a lot more.
"Perhaps if I describe one of the tests we ran," Dr. O'Connor said,
"things will be somewhat clearer." He leaned back in his chair. Malone
shifted his feet again and transferred his hat from his right hand to
his left hand.
"We put one of our test subjects in the insulated room," Dr. O'Connor
said, "and connected him to the detector. He was to read from a book--a
book that was not too common. This was, of course, to obviate the chance
that some other person nearby might be reading it, or might have read it
in the past. We picked 'The Blood is the Death,' by Hieronymus
Melanchthon, which, as you may know, is a very rare book indeed."
"Sure," Malone said. He had never heard of the book, but he was, after
all, willing to take Dr. O'Connor's word for it.
The telepathy expert went on: "Our test subject read it carefully,
scanning rather than skimming. Cameras recorded the movements of his
eyes in order for us to tell just what he was reading at any given
moment, in order to correlate what was going on in his mind with the
reactions of the machine's indicators, if you follow me."
Malone nodded helplessly.
"At the same time," Dr. O'Connor continued blithely, "we had Charlie in
a nearby room, recording his babblings. Every so often, he would come
out with quotations from 'The Blood is the Death,' and these quotations
corresponded exactly with what our test subject was reading at the time,
and also corresponded with the abnormal fluctuations of the detector."
* * * * *
Dr. O'Connor paused. Something, Malone realized, was expected of him. He
thought of several responses and chose one. "I see," he said.
"But the important thing here," Dr. O'Connor said, "is the timing. You
see, Charlie was incapable of continued concentration. He could not keep
his mind focused on another mind for very long, before he hopped to
still another. The actual amount of time concentrated on any given mind
at any single given period varied from a minimum of one point three
seconds to a maximum of two point six. The timing samples, when plotted
graphically over a period of several months, formed a skewed bell curve
with a mode at two point oh seconds."
"Ah," Malone said, wondering if a skewed bell curve was the same thing
as a belled skew curve, and if not, why not?
"It was, in fact," Dr. O'Connor continued relentlessly, "a sudden
variation in those timings which convinced us that there was another
telepath somewhere in the vicinity. We were conducting a second set of
reading experiments, in precisely the same manner as the first set, and,
for the first part of the experiment, our figures were substantially the
same. But--" He stopped.
"Yes?" Malone said, shifting his feet and trying to take some weight off
his left foot by standing on his right leg. Then he stood on his left
leg. It didn't seem to do any good.
"I should explain," Dr. O'Connor said, "that we were conducting this
series with a new set of test subjects: some of the scientists here at
Yucca Flats. We wanted to see if the intelligence quotients of the
subjects affected the time of contact which Charlie was able to
maintain. Naturally, we picked the men here with the highest IQ's, the
two men we have who are in the top echelon of the creative genius
class." He cleared his throat. "I did not include myself, of course,
since I wished to remain an impartial observer, as much as possible."
"Of course," Malone said without surprise.
"The other two geniuses," Dr. O'Connor said, "happen to be connected
with the project known as Project Isle--an operation whose function I
neither know, nor care to know, anything at all about."
Malone nodded. Project Isle was the non-rocket spaceship. Classified.
Top Secret. Ultra-Secret. And, he thought, just about anything else you
could think of.
"At first," Dr. O'Connor was saying, "our detector recorded the time
periods of ... ah mental invasion as being the same as before. Then, one
day, anomalies began to appear. The detector showed that the minds of
our subjects were being held for as long as two or three minutes. But
the phrases repeated by Charlie during these periods showed that his own
contact time remained the same; that is, they fell within the same
skewed bell curve as before, and the mode remained constant if nothing
but the phrase length were recorded."
"Hm-m-m," Malone said, feeling that he ought to be saying something.
Dr. O'Connor didn't notice him. "At first we thought of errors in the
detector machine," he went on. "That worried us not somewhat, since our
understanding of the detector is definitely limited at this time. We do
feel that it would be possible to replace some of the electronic
components with appropriate symbolization like that already used in the
purely psionic sections, but we have, as yet, been unable to determine
exactly which electronic components must be replaced by what symbolic
components."
Malone nodded, silently this time. He had the sudden feeling that Dr.
O'Connor's flow of words had broken itself up into a vast sea of
alphabet soup, and that he, Malone, was occupied in drowning in it.
"However," Dr. O'Connor said, breaking what was left of Malone's train
of thought, "young Charlie died soon thereafter, and we decided to go on
checking the machine. It was during this period that we found someone
else reading the minds of our test subjects--sometimes for a few
seconds, sometimes for several minutes."
"Aha," Malone said. Things were beginning to make sense again. _Someone
else._ That, of course, was the spy.
"I found," Dr. O'Connor said, "on interrogating the subjects more
closely, that they were, in effect, thinking on two levels. They were
reading the book mechanically, noting the words and sense, but simply
shuttling the material directly into their memories without actually
thinking about it. The actual thinking portions of their minds were
concentrating on aspects of Project Isle."
* * * * *
"In other words," Malone said, "someone was spying on them for
information about Project Isle?"
"Precisely," Dr. O'Connor said with a frosty, teacher-to-student smile.
"And whoever it was had a much higher concentration time than Charlie
had ever attained. He seems to be able to retain contact as long as he
can find useful information flowing in the mind being read."
"Wait a minute," Malone said. "Wait a minute. If this spy is so clever,
how come he didn't read _your_ mind?"
"It is very likely that he has," O'Connor said. "What does that have to
do with it?"
"Well," Malone said, "if he knows you and your group are working on
telepathy and can detect what he's doing, why didn't he just hold off on
the minds of those geniuses when they were being tested in your
machine?"
Dr. O'Connor frowned. "I'm afraid that I can't be sure," he said, and it
was clear from his tone that, if Dr. Thomas O'Connor wasn't sure, no one
in the entire world was, had been, or ever would be. "I do have a
theory, however," he said, brightening up a trifle.
Malone waited patiently.
"He must know our limitations," Dr. O'Connor said at last. "He must be
perfectly well aware that there's not a single thing we can _do_ about
him. He must know that we can neither find nor stop him. Why should he
worry? He can afford to ignore us--or even bait us. We're helpless, and
he knows it."
That, Malone thought, was about the most cheerless thought he had heard
in some time.
"You mentioned that you had an insulated room," the FBI agent said
after a while. "Couldn't you let your men think in there?"
Dr. O'Connor sighed. "The room is shielded against magnetic fields and
electromagnetic radiation. It is perfectly transparent to psionic
phenomena, just as it is to gravitational fields."
"Oh," Malone said. He realized rapidly that his question had been a
little silly to begin with, since the insulated room had been the place
where all the tests had been conducted in the first place. "I don't want
to take up too much of your time, doctor," he said after a pause, "but
there are a couple of other questions."
"Go right ahead," Dr. O'Connor said. "I'm sure I'll be able to help
you."
Malone thought of mentioning how little help the doctor had been to
date, but decided against it. Why antagonize a perfectly good scientist
without any reason? Instead, he selected his first question, and asked
it. "Have you got any idea how we might lay our hands on another
telepath? Preferably one that's not an imbecile, of course."
Dr. O Connor's expression changed from patient wisdom to irritation. "I
wish we could, Mr. Malone. I wish we could. We certainly need one here
to help us with our work--and I'm sure that _your_ work is important,
too. But I'm afraid we have no ideas at all about finding another
telepath. Finding little Charlie was purely fortuitous--purely, Mr.
Malone, fortuitous."
"Ah," Malone said. "Sure. Of course." He thought rapidly and discovered
that he couldn't come up with one more question. As a matter of fact,
he'd asked a couple of questions already, and he could barely remember
the answers. "Well," he said, "I guess that's about it, then, doctor. If
you come across anything else, be sure and let me know."
He leaned across the desk, extending a hand. "And thanks for your time,"
he added.
Dr. O'Connor stood up and shook his hand. "No trouble, I assure you," he
said. "And I'll certainly give you all the information I can."
Malone turned and walked out. Surprisingly, he discovered that his feet
and legs still worked. He had thought they'd turned to stone in the
office long before.
* * * * *
It was on the plane back to Washington that Malone got his first inkling
of an idea.
The only telepath that the Westinghouse boys had been able to turn up
was Charles O'Neill, the youthful imbecile.
All right, then. Suppose there were another one like him. Imbeciles
weren't very difficult to locate. Most of them would be in institutions,
and the others would certainly be on record. It might be possible to
find someone, anyway, who could be handled and used as a tool to find a
telepathic spy.
And--happy thought!--maybe one of them would turn out to be a
high-grade imbecile, or even a moron.
[Illustration]
Even if they only turned up another imbecile, he thought wearily, at
least Dr. O'Connor would have something to work with.
He reported back to Burris when he arrived in Washington, told him about
the interview with Dr. O'Connor, and explained what had come to seem a
rather feeble brainstorm.
"It doesn't seem too productive," Burris said, with a shade of
disappointment in his voice, "but we'll try it."
At that, it was a better verdict than Malone had hoped for. He had
nothing to do but wait, while orders went out to field agents all over
the United States, and quietly, but efficiently, the FBI went to work.
Agents probed and pried and poked their noses into the files and data
sheets of every mental institution in the fifty states--as far, at any
rate, as they were able.
It was not an easy job. The inalienable right of a physician to refuse
to disclose confidences respecting a patient applied even to idiots,
imbeciles, and morons. Not even the FBI could open the private files of
a licensed and registered psychiatrist.
But the field agents did the best they could and, considering the
circumstances, their best was pretty good.
Malone, meanwhile, put in two weeks sitting glumly at his Washington
desk and checking reports as they arrived. They were uniformly
depressing. The United States of America contained more subnormal minds
than Malone cared to think about. There seemed to be enough of them to
explain the results of any election you were unhappy over.
Unfortunately, subnormal was all you could call them. Not one of them
appeared to possess any abnormal psionic abilities whatever.
There were a couple who were reputed to be poltergeists--but in neither
case was there a single shred of evidence to substantiate the claim.
At the end of the second week, Malone was just about convinced that his
idea had been a total washout. A full fortnight had been spent on
digging up imbeciles, while the spy at Yucca Flats had been going right
on his merry way, scooping information out of the men at Project Isle as
though he were scooping beans out of a pot. And, very likely, laughing
himself silly at the feeble efforts of the FBI.
Who could he be?
_Anyone_, Malone told himself unhappily. _Anyone at all._ He could be
the janitor that swept out the buildings, one of the guards at the gate,
one of the minor technicians on another project, or even some old
prospector wandering around the desert with a scintillation counter.
Is there any limit to telepathic range?
The spy could even be sitting quietly in an armchair in the Kremlin,
probing through several thousand miles of solid earth to peep into the
brains of the men on Project Isle.
That was, to say the very least, a depressing idea.
Malone found he had to assume that the spy was in the United
States--that, in other words, there was some effective range to
telepathic communication. Otherwise, there was no point in bothering to
continue the search.
Therefore, he found one other thing to do. He alerted every agent to the
job of discovering how the spy was getting his information out of the
country.
He doubted that it would turn up anything, but it was a chance. And
Malone hoped desperately for it, because he was beginning to be sure
that the field agents were never going to turn up any telepathic
imbeciles.
He was right.
They never did.
III
The telephone rang.
Malone rolled over on the couch and muttered under his breath. Was it
absolutely necessary for someone to call him at seven in the morning?
He grabbed at the receiver with one hand, and picked up his cigar from
the ashtray with the other. It was bad enough to be awakened from a
sound sleep--but when a man hadn't been sleeping at all, it was even
worse.
He'd been sitting up since before five that morning, worrying about the
telepathic spy, and at the moment he wanted sleep more than he wanted
phone calls.
"Gur?" he said, sleepily and angrily, thankful that he'd never had a
visiphone installed in his apartment.
A feminine voice said: "Mr. Kenneth J. Malone?"
"Who's this?" Malone said peevishly, beginning to discover himself
capable of semirational English speech.
"Long distance from San Francisco," the voice said.
"It certainly is," Malone said. "Who's calling?"
"San Francisco is calling," the voice said primly.
Malone repressed a desire to tell the voice off, and said instead:
"_Who_ in San Francisco?"
There was a momentary hiatus, and then the voice said: "Mr. Thomas Boyd
is calling, sir. He says this is a scramble call."
Malone took a drag from his cigar and closed his eyes. Obviously the
call was a scramble. If it had been clear, the man would have dialed
direct, instead of going through what Malone now recognized as an
operator.
"Mr. Boyd says he is the Agent-in-Charge of the San Francisco office of
the FBI," the voice offered.
"And quite right, too," Malone told her. "All right. Put him on."
"One moment." There was a pause, a click, another pause and then another
click. At last the operator said: "Your party is ready, sir."
Then there was still another pause. Malone stared at the audio receiver.
He began to whistle "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling."
* * * * *
"Hello? Malone?"
"I'm here, Tom," Malone said guiltily. "This is me. What's the trouble?"
"Trouble?" Boyd said. "There isn't any trouble. Well, not really. Or
maybe it is. I don't know."
Malone scowled at the audio receiver, and for the first time wished he
had gone ahead and had a video circuit put in, so that Boyd could see
the horrendous expression on his face.
"Look," he said. "It's seven here and that's too early. Out there, it's
four, and that's practically ridiculous. What's so important?"
He knew perfectly well that Boyd wasn't calling him just for the fun of
it. The man was a good agent. But why a call at this hour?
Malone muttered under his breath. Then, self-consciously, he squashed
out his cigar and lit a cigarette while Boyd was saying: "Ken, I think
we may have found what you've been looking for."
It wasn't safe to say too much, even over a scrambled circuit. But
Malone got the message without difficulty.
"Yeah?" he said, sitting up on the edge of the couch. "You sure?"
"Well," Boyd said, "no. Not absolutely sure. Not absolutely. But it is
worth your taking a personal look, I think."
"Ah," Malone said cautiously. "An imbecile?"
"No," Boyd said flatly. "Not an imbecile. Definitely not an imbecile. As
a matter of fact, a hell of a fat long way from an imbecile."
Malone glanced at his watch and skimmed over the airline timetables in
his mind. "I'll be there nine o'clock, your time," he said. "Have a car
waiting for me at the field."
* * * * *
As usual, Malone managed to sleep better on the plane than he'd been
able to do at home. He slept so well, in fact, that he was still groggy
when he stepped into the waiting car.
"Good to see you, Ken," Boyd said briskly, as he shook Malone's hand.
"You, too, Tom," Malone said sleepily. "Now what's all this about?" He
looked around apprehensively. "No bugs in this car, I hope?" he said.
Boyd gunned the motor and headed toward the San Francisco Freeway.
"Better not be," he said, "or I'll fire me a technician or two."
"Well, then," Malone said, relaxing against the upholstery, "where is
this guy, and who is he? And how did you find him?"
Boyd looked uncomfortable. It was, somehow, both an awe-inspiring and a
slightly risible sight. Six feet one and one half inches tall in his
flat feet, Boyd ported around over two hundred and twenty pounds of
bone, flesh and muscle. He swung a potbelly of startling proportions
under the silk shirting he wore, and his face, with its wide nose, small
eyes and high forehead, was half highly mature, half startlingly
childlike. In an apparent effort to erase those childlike qualities,
Boyd sported a fringe of beard and a mustache which reminded Malone of
somebody he couldn't quite place.
But whoever the somebody was, his hair hadn't been black, as Boyd's
was--
He decided it didn't make any difference. Anyhow, Boyd was speaking.
"In the first place," he said, "it isn't a guy. In the second, I'm not
exactly sure who it is. And in the third, Ken, I didn't find it."
There was a little silence.
"Don't tell me," Malone said. "It's a telepathic horse, isn't it? Tom, I
just don't think I could stand a telepathic horse--"
"No," Boyd said hastily. "No. Not at all. No horse. It's a dame. I mean
a lady." He looked away from the road and flashed a glance at Malone.
His eyes seemed to be pleading for something--understanding, possibly,
Malone thought. "Frankly," Boyd said, "I'd rather not tell you anything
about her just yet. I'd rather you met her first. Then you could make up
your own mind. All right?"
"All right," Malone said wearily. "Do it your own way. How far do we
have to go?"
"Just about an hour's drive," Boyd said. "That's all."
Malone slumped back in the seat and pushed his hat over his eyes.
"Fine," he said. "Suppose you wake me up when we get there."
But, groggy as he was, he couldn't sleep. He wished he'd had some coffee
on the plane. Maybe it would have made him feel better.
Then again, coffee was only coffee. True, he had never acquired his
father's taste for gin, but there was always bourbon.
He thought about bourbon for a few minutes. It was a nice thought. It
warmed him and made him feel a lot better. After a while, he even felt
awake enough to do some talking.
He pushed his hat back and struggled to a reasonable sitting position.
"I don't suppose you have a drink hidden away in the car somewhere?" he
said tentatively. "Or would the technicians have found that, too?"
"Better not have," Boyd said in the same tone as before, "or I'll fire a
couple of technicians." He grinned without turning. "It's in the door
compartment, next to the forty-five cartridges and the Tommy gun."
Malone opened the compartment in the thick door of the car and extracted
a bottle. It was brandy instead of the bourbon he had been thinking
about, but he discovered that he didn't mind at all. It went down as
smoothly as milk.
Boyd glanced at it momentarily as Malone screwed the top back on.
"No," Malone said in answer to the unspoken question. "You're driving."
Then he settled back again and tipped his hat forward.
He didn't sleep a wink. He was perfectly sure of that. But it wasn't
over two seconds later that Boyd said: "We're here, Ken. Wake up."
"Whadyamean, wakeup," Malone said. "I wasn't asleep." He thumbed his hat
back and sat up rapidly. "Where's 'here'?"
"Bayview Neuropsychiatric Hospital," Boyd said. "This is where Dr.
Harman works, you know."
"No," Malone said. "As a matter of fact, I don't know. You didn't tell
me--remember? And who is Dr. Harman, anyhow?"
The car was moving up a long, curving driveway toward a large,
lawn-surrounded building. Boyd spoke without looking away from the road.
"Well," he said, "this Dr. Willard Harman is the man who phoned us
yesterday. One of my field agents was out here asking around about
imbeciles and so on. Found nothing, by the way. And then this Dr. Harman
called, later. Said he had someone here I might be interested in. So I
came on out myself for a look, yesterday afternoon ... after all, we had
instructions to follow up every possible lead."
"I know," Malone said. "I wrote them."
"Oh," Boyd said. "Sure. Well, anyhow, I talked to this dame. Lady."
"And?"
"And I talked to her," Boyd said. "I'm not entirely sure of anything
myself. But ... well, hell. You take a look at her."
He pulled the car up to a parking space, slid nonchalantly into a slot
marked _Reserved--Executive Director Sutton_, and slid out from under
the wheel while Malone got out the other side.
* * * * *
They marched up the broad steps, through the doorway and into the
glass-fronted office of the receptionist.
Boyd showed her his little golden badge, and got an appropriate gasp.
"FBI," he said. "Dr. Harman's expecting us."
The wait wasn't over fifteen seconds. Boyd and Malone marched down the
hall and around a couple of corners, and came to the doctor's office.
The door was opaqued glass with nothing but a room number stenciled on
it. Without ceremony, Boyd pushed the door open. Malone followed him
inside.
The office was small but sunny. Dr. Willard Harman sat behind a
blond-wood desk, a chunky little man with crew-cut blond hair and
rimless eyeglasses, who looked about thirty-two and couldn't possibly,
Malone thought, have been anywhere near that young. On a second look,
Malone noticed a better age indication in the eyes and forehead, and
revised his first guess upward between ten and fifteen years.
"Come in, gentlemen," Dr. Harman boomed. His voice was that rarity, a
really loud high tenor.
"Dr. Harman," Boyd said, "this is my superior, Mr. Malone. We'd like to
have a talk with Miss Thompson."
"I anticipated that, sir," Dr. Harman said. "Miss Thompson is in the
next room. Have you explained to Mr. Malone that--"
"I haven't explained a thing," Boyd said quickly, and added in what was
obviously intended to be a casual tone: "Mr. Malone wants to get a
picture of Miss Thompson directly--without any preconceptions."
"I see," Dr. Harman said. "Very well, gentlemen. Through this door."
He opened the door in the right-hand wall of the room, and Malone took
one look. It was a long, long look. Standing framed in the doorway,
dressed in the starched white of a nurse's uniform, was the most
beautiful blonde he had ever seen.
She had curves. She definitely had curves. As a matter of fact, Malone
didn't really think he had ever seen curves before. These were something
new and different and truly three-dimensional. But it wasn't the curves,
or the long straight lines of her legs, or the quiet beauty of her face,
that made her so special. After all, Malone had seen legs and bodies and
faces before.
At least, he thought he had. Off-hand, he couldn't remember where.
Looking at the girl, Malone was ready to write brand-new definitions for
every anatomical term. Even a term like "hands." Malone had never seen
anything especially arousing in the human hand before--anyway, not when
the hand was just lying around, so to speak, attached to its wrist but
not doing anything in particular. But these hands, long, slender and
tapering, white and cool-looking....
And yet, it wasn't just the sheer physical beauty of the girl. She had
something else, something more and something different. (_Something
borrowed_, Malone thought in a semi-delirious haze, _and something
blue_.) Personality? Character? Soul?
Whatever it was, Malone decided, this girl had it. She had enough of it
to supply the entire human race, and any others that might exist in the
Universe. Malone smiled at the girl and she smiled back.
After seeing the smile, Malone wasn't sure he could still walk evenly.
Somehow, though, he managed to go over to her and extend his hand. The
notion that a telepath would turn out to be this mind-searing Epitome
had never crossed his mind, but now, somehow, it seemed perfectly
fitting and proper.
"Good morning, Miss Thompson," he said in what he hoped was a winning
voice.
The smile disappeared. It was like the sun going out.
The vision appeared to be troubled. Malone was about to volunteer his
help--if necessary, for the next seventy years--when she spoke.
"I'm not Miss Thompson," she said.
"This is one of our nurses," Dr. Harman put in. "Miss Wilson, Mr.
Malone. And Mr. Boyd. Miss Thompson, gentlemen, is over there."
Malone turned.
* * * * *
There, in a corner of the room, an old lady sat. She was a small old
lady, with apple-red cheeks and twinkling eyes. She held some knitting
in her hands, and she smiled up at the FBI men as if they were her
grandsons come for tea and cookies, of a Sunday afternoon.
She had snow-white hair that shone like a crown around her old head in
the lights of the room. Malone blinked at her. She didn't disappear.
"_You're_ Miss Thompson?" he said.
She smiled sweetly. "Oh, my, no," she said.
There was a long silence. Malone looked at her. Then he looked at the
unbelievably beautiful Miss Wilson. Then he looked at Dr. Harman. And,
at last, he looked at Boyd.
"All right," he said. "I get it. _You're_ Miss Thompson."
"Now, wait a minute, Malone," Boyd began.
"Wait a minute?" Malone said. "There are four people here, not counting
me. I know I'm not Miss Thompson. I never was, not even as a child. And
Dr. Harman isn't, and Miss Wilson isn't, and Whistler's
Great-Grandmother isn't, either. So you must be. Unless she isn't here.
Or unless she's invisible. Or unless I'm crazy."
"It isn't _you_, Malone," Boyd said.
"What isn't me?"
"That's crazy," Boyd said.
"O.K.," Malone said. "I'm not crazy. Then will somebody please tell
me--"
The little old lady cleared her throat. A silence fell. When it was
complete she spoke, and her voice was as sweet and kindly as anything
Malone had ever heard.
"You may call me Miss Thompson," she said. "For the present, at any
rate. They all do here. It's a pseudonym I have to use."
"A pseudonym?" Malone said.
"You see, Mr. Malone," Miss Wilson began.
Malone stopped her. "Don't talk," he said. "I have to concentrate and if
you talk I can barely think." He took off his hat suddenly, and began
twisting the brim in his hands. "You understand, don't you?"
The trace of a smile appeared on her face. "I think I do," she said.
"Now," Malone said, "you're Miss Thompson, but not really, because you
have to use a pseudonym." He blinked at the little old lady. "Why?"
"Well," she said, "otherwise people would find out about my little
secret."
"Your little secret," Malone said.
"That's right," the little old lady said. "I'm immortal, you see."
Malone said: "Oh." Then he kept quiet for a long time. It didn't seem to
him that anyone in the room was breathing.
He said: "Oh," again, but it didn't sound any better than it had the
first time. He tried another phrase. "You're immortal," he said.
"That's right," the little old lady agreed sweetly.
There was only one other question to ask, and Malone set his teeth
grimly and asked it. It came out just a trifle indistinct, but the
little old lady nodded.
"My real name?" she said. "Elizabeth. Elizabeth Tudor, of course. I used
to be Queen."
"Of England," Malone said faintly.
"Malone, look--" Boyd began.
"Let me get it all at once," Malone told him. "I'm strong. I can take
it." He twisted his hat again and turned back to the little old lady.
"You're immortal, and you're not really Miss Thompson, but Queen
Elizabeth I?" he said slowly.
"That's right," she said. "How clever of you. Of course, after little
Jimmy--cousin Mary's boy, I mean--said I was dead and claimed the
Throne, I decided to change my name and all. And that's what I did. But
I am Elizabeth Regina." She smiled, and her eyes twinkled merrily.
Malone stared at her for a long minute.
_Burris_, he thought, _is going to love this_.
"Oh, I'm so glad," the little old lady said. "Do you really think he
will? Because I'm sure I'll like your Mr. Burris, too. All of you FBI
men are so charming. Just like poor, poor Essex."
Well, Malone told himself, that was that. He'd found himself a telepath.
And she wasn't an imbecile.
Oh, no. That would have been simple.
Instead, she was battier than a cathedral spire.
* * * * *
The long silence was broken by the voice of Miss Wilson.
"Mr. Malone," she said, "you've been thinking." She stopped. "I mean,
you've been so quiet."
"I like being quiet," Malone said patiently. "Besides--" He stopped and
turned to the little old lady. _Can you really read my mind?_ he thought
deliberately. After a second he added: _... your majesty?_
"How sweet of you, Mr. Malone," she said. "Nobody's called me that for
centuries. But of course I can. Although it's not reading, really. After
all, that would be like asking if I can read your voice. Of course I
can, Mr. Malone."
"That does it," Malone said. "I'm not a hard man to convince. And when I
see the truth, I'm the first one to admit it, even if it makes me look
like a nut." He turned back to the little old lady. "Begging your
pardon," he said.
"Oh, my," the little old lady said. "I really don't mind at all. Sticks
and stones, you know, can break my bones. But being called nuts, Mr.
Malone, can never hurt me. After all, it's been so many years--so many
hundreds of years--"
"Sure," Malone said easily.
Boyd broke in. "Listen, Malone," he said, "do you mind telling me what
is going on?"
"It's very simple," Malone said. "Miss Thompson here ... pardon me; I
mean Queen Elizabeth I ... really is a telepath. That's all. I think I
want to lie down somewhere until it goes away."
"Until what goes away?" Miss Wilson said.
Malone stared at her almost without seeing her, if not quite.
"Everything," he said. He closed his eyes.
"My goodness," the little old lady said after a second. "Everything's so
confused. Poor Mr. Malone is terribly shaken up by everything." She
stood up, still holding her knitting, and went across the room. Before
the astonished eyes of the doctor and nurse, and Tom Boyd, she patted
the FBI agent on the shoulder. "There, there, Mr. Malone," she said. "It
will all be perfectly all right. You'll see." Then she returned to her
seat.
Malone opened his eyes. He turned to Dr. Harman. "You called up Boyd
here," he said, "and told him that ... er ... Miss Thompson was a
telepath. Howd' you know?"
"It's all right," the little old lady put in from her chair. "I don't
mind your calling me Miss Thompson, not right now, anyhow."
"Thanks," Malone said faintly.
Dr. Harman was blinking in a kind of befuddled astonishment. "You mean
she really _is_ a--" He stopped and brought his tenor voice to a
squeaking halt, regained his professional poise, and began again. "I'd
rather not discuss the patient in her presence, Mr. Malone," he said.
"If you'll just come into my office--"
"Oh, _bosh_, Dr. Harman," the little old lady said primly. "I do wish
you'd give your own Queen credit for some ability. Goodness knows you
think _you're_ smart enough."
"Now, now, Miss Thompson," he said in what was obviously his best Grade
A Choice Government Inspected couchside manner. "Don't...."
"... Upset yourself," she finished for him. "Now, really, doctor. I know
what you're going to tell them."
"But Miss Thompson, I--"
"You didn't honestly think I _was_ a telepath," the little old lady
said. "Heavens, we know that. And you're going to tell them how I used
to say I could read minds ... oh, years and years ago. And because of
that you thought it might be worth while to tell the FBI about me--which
wasn't very kind of you, doctor, before you knew anything about why they
wanted somebody like me."
* * * * *
"Now, now, Miss Thompson," Miss Wilson said, walking across the room to
put an arm around the little old lady's shoulder. Malone wished for one
brief second that he were the old little old lady. Maybe if he were a
patient in the hospital he would get the same treatment.
He wondered if he could possibly work such a deal.
Then he wondered if it would be worth while, being nuts. But of course
it would. He was nuts anyhow, wasn't he?
Sure, he told himself. They were all nuts.
"Nobody's going to hurt you," Miss Wilson said. She was talking to the
old lady. "You'll be perfectly all right and you don't have to worry
about a thing."
"Oh, yes, dear, I know that," the little old lady said. "You only want
to help me, dear. You're so kind. And these FBI men really don't mean
any harm. But Dr. Harman didn't know that. He just thinks I'm crazy and
that's all."
"Please, Miss Thompson--" Dr. Harman began.
"Just crazy, that's all," the little old lady said. She turned away for
a second and nobody said anything. Then she turned back. "Do you all
know what he's thinking now?" she said. Dr. Harman turned a dull purple,
but she ignored him. "He's wondering why I didn't take the trouble to
prove all this to you years ago. And besides that, he's thinking
about--"
[Illustration]
"Miss Thompson," Dr. Harman said. His bedside manner had cracked through
and his voice was harsh and strained. "Please."
"Oh, all right," she said, a little petulantly. "If you want to keep all
that private."
Malone broke in suddenly, fascinated. "Why didn't you prove you were
telepathic before now?" he said.
The little old lady smiled at him. "Why, because you wouldn't have
believed me," she said. She dropped her knitting neatly in her lap and
folded her hands over it. "None of you _wanted_ to believe me," she
said, and sniffed. Miss Wilson moved nervously and she looked up. "And
don't tell me it's going to be all right. I know it's going to be all
right. I'm going to make sure of that."
Malone felt a sudden chill. But it was obvious, he told himself, that
the little old lady didn't mean what she was saying. She smiled at him
again, and her smile was as sweet and guileless as the smile on the face
of his very own sainted grandmother.
Not that Malone remembered his grandmother; she had died before he'd
been born. But if he'd had a grandmother, and if he'd remembered her, he
was sure she would have had the same sweet smile.
So she couldn't have meant what she'd said. Would Malone's own
grandmother make things difficult for him? The very idea was ridiculous.
Dr. Harman opened his mouth, apparently changed his mind, and shut it
again. The little old lady turned to him.
"Were you going to ask why I bothered to prove anything to Mr. Malone?"
she said. "Of course you were, and I shall tell you. It's because Mr.
Malone _wanted_ to believe me. He _wants_ me. He _needs_ me. I'm a
telepath, and that's enough for Mr. Malone. Isn't it?"
"Gur," Malone said, taken by surprise. After a second he added: "I guess
so."
"You see, doctor?" the little old lady said.
"But you--" Dr. Harman began.
"I read minds," the little old lady said. "That's right, doctor. That's
what makes me a telepath."
Malone's brain was whirling rapidly, like a distant galaxy. "Telepath"
was a nice word, he thought. How did you telepath from a road?
Simple.
A road is paved.
Malone thought that was pretty funny, but he didn't laugh. He thought he
would never laugh again. He wanted to cry, a little, but he didn't think
he'd be able to manage that either.
He twisted his hat, but it didn't make him feel any better. Gradually,
he became aware that the little old lady was talking to Dr. Harman
again.
"But," she said, "since it will make you feel so much better, doctor, we
give you our Royal permission to retire, and to speak to Mr. Malone
alone."
"Malone alone," Dr. Harman muttered. "Hm-m-m. My. Well." He turned and
seemed to be surprised that Malone was actually standing near him.
"Yes," he said. "Well. Mr. Alone ... Malone ... please, whoever you are,
just come into my office, please?"
Malone looked at the little old lady. One of her eyes closed and opened.
It was an unmistakable wink.
Malone grinned at her in what he hoped was a cheerful manner. "All
right," he said to the psychiatrist, "let's go." He turned with the
barest trace of regret, and Boyd followed him. Leaving the little old
lady and, unfortunately, the startling Miss Wilson, behind, the
procession filed back into Dr. Harman's office.
* * * * *
The doctor closed the door, and leaned against it for a second. He
looked as though someone had suddenly revealed to him that the world was
square. But when he spoke his voice was almost even.
"Sit down, gentlemen," he said, and indicated chairs. "I really ...
well, I don't know what to say. All this time, all these years, she's
been reading my mind! My mind. She's been reading ... looking right into
my mind, or whatever it is."
"Whatever what is?" Malone asked, sincerely interested. He had dropped
gratefully into a chair near Boyd's, across the desk from Dr. Harman.
"Whatever my _mind_ is," Dr. Harman said. "Reading it. Oh, my."
"Dr. Harman," Malone began, but the psychiatrist gave him a bright blank
stare.
"Don't you understand?" he said. "She's a telepath."
"We--"
The phone on Dr. Harman's desk chimed gently. He glanced at it and said:
"Excuse me. The phone." He picked up the receiver and said: "Hello?"
There was no image on the screen.
But the voice was image enough. "This is Andrew J. Burris," it said. "Is
Kenneth J. Malone there?"
"Mr. Malone?" the psychiatrist said. "I mean, Mr. Burris? Mr. Malone is
here. Yes. Oh, my. Do you want to talk to him?"
"No, you idiot," the voice said. "I just want to know if he's all tucked
in."
"Tucked in?" Dr. Harman gave the phone a sudden smile. "A joke," he
said. "It _is_ a joke, isn't it? The way things have been happening, you
never know whether--"
"A joke," Burris' voice said. "That's right. Yes. Am I talking to one of
the patients?"
Dr. Harman gulped, got mad, and thought better of it. At last he said,
very gently: "I'm not at all sure," and handed the phone to Malone.
The FBI agent said: "Hello, chief. Things are a little confused."
Burris' face appeared on the screen. "Confused, sure," he said. "I feel
confused already." He took a breath. "I called the San Francisco office,
and they told me you and Boyd were out there. What's going on?"
Malone said cautiously: "We've found a telepath."
Burris' eyes widened slightly. "Another one?"
"What are you talking about, another one?" Malone said. "We have one.
Does anybody else have any more?"
"Well," Burris said, "we just got a report on another one--maybe.
Besides yours, I mean."
"I hope the one you've got is in better shape than the one I've got,"
Malone said. He took a deep breath, and then spat it all out at once:
"The one we've found is a little old lady. She thinks she's Queen
Elizabeth I. She's a telepath, sure, but she's nuts."
"Queen Elizabeth?" Burris said. "Of England?"
"That's right," Malone said. He held his breath.
"Damn it," Burris exploded, "they've already got one."
Malone sighed. "This is another one," he said. "Or, rather, the original
one. She also claims she's immortal."
"Lives forever?" Burris said. "You mean like that?"
"Immortal," Malone said. "Right."
Burris nodded. Then he looked worried. "Tell me, Malone," he said. "She
_isn't_, is she?"
"Isn't immortal, you mean?" Malone said. Burris nodded. Malone said
confidently: "Of course not."
There was a little pause. Malone thought things over.
Hell, maybe she was immortal. Stranger things had happened, hadn't they?
He looked over at Dr. Harman. "How about that?" he said. "Could she be
immortal?"
The psychiatrist shook his head decisively. "She's been here for over
forty years, Mr. Malone, ever since her late teens. Her records show all
that, and her birth certificate is in perfect order. Not a chance."
Malone sighed and turned back to the phone. "Of course she isn't
immortal, chief," he said. "She couldn't be. Nobody is. Just a nut."
"I was afraid of that," Burris said.
"Afraid?" Malone said.
Burris nodded. "We've got another one--if he checks out," he said.
"Right here in Washington--St. Elizabeths."
"Another nut?"
"Strait-jacket case," Burris said. "Delusions of persecution. Paranoia.
And a lot of other things I can't pronounce. But I'm sending him on out
to Yucca Flats anyhow, under guard. You might find a use for him."
"Oh, sure," Malone said.
"We can't afford to overlook a thing," Burris said.
Malone sighed. "I know," he said. "But all the same--"
"Don't worry about a thing, Malone," Burris said with a palpably false
air of confidence. "You get this Queen Elizabeth of yours out of there
and take her to Yucca Flats, too."
Malone considered the possibilities. Maybe they would find more
telepaths. Maybe all the telepaths would be nuts. It didn't seem
unlikely. Imagine having a talent that nobody would believe you had. It
might very easily drive you crazy to be faced with a situation like
that.
And there they would be in Yucca Flats. Kenneth J. Malone, and a
convention of looney-bin inhabitants.
Fun!
Malone began to wonder why he had gone into FBI work in the first place.
"Listen, chief," he said. "I--"
"Sure, I understand," Burris said quickly. "She's batty. But what else
can we do? Malone, don't do anything you'll regret."
"What?"
"I mean, don't resign."
"Chief, how did you know--you're not telepathic too, are you?"
"Of course not," Burris said. "But that's what I would do in your place.
And don't do it."
"Look, chief," Malone said. "These nuts--"
"Malone, you've done a wonderful job so far," Burris said. "You'll get a
raise and a better job when all this is over. Who else would have
thought of looking in the twitch-bins for telepaths? But you did,
Malone, and I'm proud of you, and you're stuck with it. We've got to use
them now. We have to find that spy!" He took a breath. "On to Yucca
Flats!" he said.
Malone gave up. "Yes, sir," he said. "Anything else?"
"Not right now," Burris said. "If there is, I'll let you know."
* * * * *
Malone hung up unhappily as the image vanished. He looked at Dr. Harman.
"Well," he said, "that's that. What do I have to do to get a release for
Miss Thompson?"
Harman stared at him. "But, Mr. Malone," he said, "that just isn't
possible. Really. Miss Thompson is a ward of the state, and we couldn't
possibly allow her release without a court order."
Malone thought that over. "O.K.," he said at last. "I can see that." He
turned to Boyd. "Here's a job for you, Tom," he said. "Get one of the
judges on the phone. You'll know which one will do us the most good,
fastest."
"Hm-m-m," Boyd said. "Say Judge Dunning," he said. "Good man. Fast
worker."
"I don't care who," Malone said. "Just get going, and get us a release
for Miss Thompson." He turned back to the doctor. "By the way," he said,
"has she got any other name? Besides Elizabeth Tudor, I mean," he added
hurriedly.
"Her full name," Dr. Harman said, "is Rose Walker Thompson. She is not
Queen Elizabeth I, II, or XXVIII, and she is not immortal."
"But she is," Malone pointed out, "a telepath. And that's why I want
her."
"She may," Dr. Harman said, "be a telepath." It was obvious that he had
partly managed to forget the disturbing incidents that had happened a
few minutes before. "I don't even want to discuss that part of it."
"O.K., never mind it," Malone said agreeably. "Tom, get us a court order
for Rose Walker Thompson. Effective yesterday--day before, if possible."
Boyd nodded, but before he could get to the phone Dr. Harman spoke
again.
"Now, wait a moment, gentlemen," he said. "Court order or no court
order, Miss Thompson is definitely not a well woman, and I can't see my
way clear to--"
"I'm not well myself," Malone said. "I need sleep and I probably have a
cold. But I've got to work for the national security, and--"
"This is important," Boyd put in.
"I don't dispute that," Dr. Harman said. "Nevertheless, I--"
The door that led into the other room suddenly burst open. The three men
turned to stare at Miss Wilson, who stood in the doorway for a long
second and then stepped into the office, closing the door quietly behind
her.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," she said.
"Not at all," Malone said. "It's a pleasure to have you. Come again
soon." He smiled at her.
She didn't smile back. "Doctor," she said, "you better talk to Miss
Thompson. I'm not at all sure what I can do. It's something new."
"New?" he said. The worry lines on his face were increasing, but he
spoke softly.
"The poor dear thinks she's going to get out of the hospital now," Miss
Wilson said. "For some reason, she's convinced that the FBI is going to
get her released, and--"
As she saw the expressions on three faces, she stopped.
"What's wrong?" she said.
"Miss Wilson," Malone said, "we ... may I call you by your first name?"
"Of course, Mr. Malone," she said.
There was a little silence.
"Miss Wilson," Malone said, "what _is_ your first name?"
She smiled now, very gently. Malone wanted to walk through mountains, or
climb fire. He felt confused, but wonderful. "Barbara," she said.
"Lovely," he said. "Well, Barbara ... and please call me Ken. It's short
for Kenneth."
The smile on her face broadened. "I thought it might be," she said.
"Well," Malone said softly, "it is. Kenneth. That's my name. And you're
Barbara."
Boyd cleared his throat.
"Ah," Malone said. "Yes. Of course. Well, Barbara ... well, that's just
what we intend to do. Take Miss Thompson away. We need her--badly."
Dr. Harman had said nothing at all, and had barely moved. He was staring
at a point on his desk. "She couldn't possibly have heard us," he
muttered. "That's a soundproof door. She couldn't have heard us."
"But you can't take Miss Thompson away," Miss Wilson said.
"We have to, Barbara," Malone said gently. "Try to understand. It's for
the national security."
"She heard us thinking," Dr. Harman muttered. "That's what; she heard us
thinking. Behind a soundproof door. She can see inside their minds. She
can even see inside _my_ mind."
"She's a sick woman," Barbara said.
"But you have to understand--"
"Vital necessity," Boyd put in. "Absolutely vital."
"Nevertheless--" Barbara said.
"She can read minds," Dr. Harman whispered in an awed tone. "She knows.
Everything. She _knows_."
"It's out of the question," Barbara said. "Whether you like it or not.
Miss Thompson is not going to leave this hospital. Why, what could she
do outside these walls? She hasn't left in over forty years! And
furthermore, Mr. Malone--"
"Kenneth," Malone put in, as the door opened again. "I mean Ken."
* * * * *
The little old lady put her haloed head into the room. "Now, now,
Barbara," she said. "Don't you go spoiling things. Just let these nice
men take me away and everything will be fine, believe me. Besides, I've
been outside more often than you imagine."
"Outside?" Barbara said.
"Of course," the little old lady said. "In other people's minds. Even
yours. I remember that nice young man ... what was his name?"
"Never mind his name," Barbara said, flushing furiously.
Malone felt instantly jealous of every nice young man he had ever even
heard of. _He_ wasn't a nice young man; he was an FBI agent, and he
liked to drink and smoke cigars and carouse.
All nice young men, he decided, should be turned into ugly old men as
soon as possible. That'd fix them!
He noticed the little old lady smiling at him, and tried to change his
thoughts rapidly. But the little old lady said nothing at all.
"At any rate," Barbara said, "I'm afraid that we just can't--"
Dr. Harman cleared his throat imperiously. It was a most impressive
noise, and everyone turned to look at him. His face was a little gray,
but he looked, otherwise, like a rather pudgy, blond, crew-cut Roman
emperor.
"Just a moment," he said with dignity, "I think you're doing the United
States of America a grave injustice, Miss Wilson--and that you're doing
an injustice to Miss Thompson, too."
"What do you mean?" she said.
"I think it would be nice for her to get away from me--I mean from
here," the psychiatrist said. "Where did you say you were taking her?"
he asked Malone.
"Yucca Flats," Malone said.
"Ah." The news seemed to please the psychiatrist. "That's a long
distance from here, isn't it? It's quite a few hundred miles away.
Perhaps even a few thousand miles away. I feel sure that will be the
best thing for me ... I mean, of course, for Miss Thompson. I shall
recommend that the court so order."
"Doctor--" But even Barbara saw, Malone could tell, that it was no good
arguing with Dr. Harman. She tried a last attack. "Doctor, who's going
to take care of her?"
A light the size and shape of North America burst in Malone's mind. He
almost chortled. But he managed to keep his voice under control. "What
she needs," he said, "is a trained psychiatric nurse."
Barbara Wilson gave him a look that had carloads of U{235} stacked away
in it, but Malone barely minded. She'd get over it, he told himself.
"Now, wasn't that sweet of you to think of that," the little old lady
said. Malone looked at her and was rewarded with another wink.
"I'm certainly glad you thought of Barbara," the little old lady went
on. "You will go with me won't you, dear? I'll make you a duchess.
Wouldn't you like to be a duchess, dear?"
Barbara looked from Malone to the little old lady, and then she looked
at Dr. Harman. Apparently what she saw failed to make her happy.
"We'll take good care of her, Barbara," Malone said.
She didn't even bother to give him an answer. After a second Boyd said:
"Well, I guess that settles it. If you'll let me use your phone, Dr.
Harman, I'll call Judge Dunning."
"Go right ahead," Dr. Harman said. "Go right ahead."
The little old lady smiled softly without looking at anybody at all.
"Won't it be wonderful?" she whispered. "At last I've been recognized.
My country is about to pay me for my services. My loyal subjects--" She
stopped and wiped what Malone thought was a tear from one
cornflower-blue eye.
"Now, now, Miss Thompson," Barbara said.
"I'm not sad," the little old lady said, smiling up at her. "I'm just so
very happy. I am about to get my reward, my well-deserved reward at
last, from all of my loyal subjects. You'll see." She paused and Malone
felt a faint stirring of stark, chill fear.
"Won't it be wonderful?" said the little old lady.
IV
"You're _where_?" Andrew J. Burris said.
Malone looked at the surprised face on the screen and wished he hadn't
called. He had to report in, of course--but, if he'd had any sense, he'd
have ordered Boyd to do the job for him.
Oh, well, it was too late for that now. "I'm in Las Vegas," he said. "I
tried to get you last night, but I couldn't, so I--"
"Las Vegas," Burris said. "Well, well. Las Vegas." His face darkened and
his voice became very loud. "Why aren't you in Yucca Flats?" he
screamed.
"Because she insisted on it," Malone said. "The old lady. Miss Thompson.
She says there's another telepath here."
Burris closed his eyes. "Well, that's a relief," he said at last.
"Somebody in one of the gambling houses, I suppose. Fine, Malone." He
went right on without a pause: "The boys have uncovered two more in
various parts of the nation. Not one of them is even close to sane." He
opened his eyes. "Where's this one?" he said.
Malone sighed. "In the looney bin," he said.
Burris' eyes closed again. Malone waited in silence. At last Burris
said: "All right. Get him out."
"Right," Malone said.
"Tell me," Burris said. "Why did Miss Thompson insist that you go to Las
Vegas? Somebody else could have done the job. You could have sent Boyd,
couldn't you?"
"Chief," Malone said slowly, "what sort of mental condition are those
other telepaths in?"
"Pretty bad," Burris said. "As a matter of fact, very bad. Miss Thompson
may be off her trolley, but the others haven't even got any tracks." He
paused. "What's that got to do with it?" he said.
"Well," Malone said, "I figured we'd better handle Miss Thompson with
kid gloves--at least until we find a better telepath to work with." He
didn't mention Barbara Wilson. The chief, he told himself, didn't want
to be bothered with details.
[Illustration]
"Doggone right you'd better," Burris said. "You treat that old lady as
if she were the Queen herself, understand?"
"Don't worry," Malone said unhappily. "We are." He hesitated. "She says
she'll help us find our spy, all right, but we've got to do it her
way--or else she won't co-operate."
"Do it her way, then," Burris said. "That spy--"
"Chief, are you sure?"
Burris blinked. "Well, then," he said, "what _is_ her way?"
Malone took a deep breath. "First," he said, "we had to come here and
pick this guy up. This William Logan, who's in a private sanitarium just
outside of Las Vegas. That's number one. Miss Thompson wants to get all
the telepaths together, so they can hold mental conversations or
something."
"And all of them batty," Burris said.
"Sure," Malone said. "A convention of nuts--and me in the middle.
Listen, chief--"
"Later," Burris said. "When this is over we can all resign, or go
fishing, or just plain shoot ourselves. But right now the national
security is primary, Malone. Remember that."
"O.K.," Malone sighed. "O.K. But she wants all the nuts here."
"Go along with her," Burris snapped. "Keep her happy. So far, Malone,
she's the only lead we have on the guy who's swiping information from
Yucca Flats. If she wants something, Malone, you do it."
"But, chief--"
"Don't interrupt me," Burris said. "If she wants to be treated like a
queen, you treat her like one. Malone, that's an order!"
"Yes, sir," Malone said sadly. "But, chief, she wants us to buy her some
new clothes."
Burris exploded: "Is that all? New clothes? Get 'em. Put 'em on the
expense account. New clothes are a drop in the bucket."
"Well ... she thinks we need new clothes, too."
"Maybe you do," Burris said. "Put the whole thing on the expense
account. You don't think I'm going to quibble about a few dollars, do
you?"
"Well--"
"Get the clothes. Just don't bother me with details like this. Handle
the job yourself, Malone--you're in charge out there. And get to Yucca
Flats as soon as possible."
Malone gave up. "Yes, sir," he said.
"All right, then," Burris said. "Call me tomorrow. Meanwhile--good luck,
Malone. Chin up."
Malone said: "Yes, sir," and reached for the switch. But Burris' voice
stopped him.
"Just one thing," he said.
"Yes, chief?" Malone said.
Burris frowned. "Don't spend any more for the clothes than you have to,"
he said.
Malone nodded, and cut off.
* * * * *
When the director's image had vanished, he got up and went to the window
of the hotel room. Outside, a huge sign told the world, and Malone, that
this was the Thunderbird-Hilton-Zeckendorf Hotel, but Malone ignored it.
He didn't need a sign; he knew where he was.
In hot water, he thought. _That's_ where he was.
Behind him, the door opened. Malone turned as Boyd came in.
"I found a costume shop, Ken," he said.
"Great," Malone said. "The chief authorized it."
"He did?" Boyd's round face fell at the news.
"He said to buy her whatever she wants. He says to treat her like a
queen."
"That," Boyd said, "we're doing now."
"I know it," Malone said. "I know it altogether too well."
"Anyhow," Boyd said, brightening, "the costume shop doesn't do us any
good. They've only got cowboy stuff and bullfighters' costumes and
Mexican stuff--you know, for their Helldorado Week here."
"You didn't give up, did you?" Malone said.
Boyd shook his head. "Of course not," he said. "Ken, this is on the
expense account, isn't it?"
"Expense account," Malone said. "Sure it is."
Boyd looked relieved. "Good," he said. "Because I had the proprietor
phone her size in, to New York."
"Better get two of 'em," Malone said. "The chief said anything she
wanted, she was supposed to have."
"I'll go back right away. I told him we wanted the stuff on the
afternoon plane, so--"
"And give him Bar ... Miss Wilson's size, and yours, and mine. Tell him
to dig up something appropriate."
"For us?" Boyd blanched visibly.
"For us," Malone said grimly.
Boyd set his jaw. "No," he said.
"Listen, Tom," Malone said, "I don't like this any better than you do.
But if I can't resign, you can't either. Costumes for everybody."
"But," Boyd said, and stopped. After a second he went on: "Malone ...
Ken ... FBI agents are supposed to be inconspicuous, aren't they?"
Malone nodded.
"Well, how inconspicuous are we going to be in this stuff?"
"It's an idea," Malone said. "But it isn't a very good one. Our first
job is to keep Miss Thompson happy. And that means costumes. And what's
more," Malone added, "from now on she's 'Your Majesty'. Got that?"
"Ken," Boyd said, "you've gone nuts."
Malone shook his head. "No, I haven't," he said. "I just wish I had. It
would be a relief."
"Me, too," Boyd said. He started for the door and turned. "I wish I
could have stayed in San Francisco," he said. "Why should she insist on
taking _me_ along?"
"The beard," Malone said.
"_My_ beard?" Boyd recoiled.
"Right," Malone said. "She says it reminds her of someone she knows.
Frankly, it reminds me of someone, too. Only I don't know who."
Boyd gulped. "I'll shave it off," he said, with the air of a man who can
do no more to propitiate the Gods.
"You will not," Malone said firmly. "Touch but a hair of yon black chin,
and I'll peel off your entire skin."
Boyd winced.
"Now," Malone said, "go back to that costume shop and arrange things.
Here." He fished in his pockets, came out with a crumpled slip of paper
and handed it to Boyd. "That's a list of my clothing sizes. Get another
list from B ... Miss Wilson." Boyd nodded. Malone thought he detected a
strange glint in the other man's eye. "Don't measure her yourself," he
said. "Just ask her."
Boyd scratched his bearded chin and nodded slowly. "All right, Ken," he
said. "But if we just don't get anywhere, don't blame me."
"If you get anywhere," Malone said, "I'll snatch you baldheaded. And
I'll leave the beard."
"I didn't mean with Miss Wilson, Ken," Boyd said. "I meant in general."
He left, with the air of a man whose world has betrayed him. His back
looked, to Malone, like the back of a man on his way to the scaffold or
guillotine.
The door closed.
Now, Malone thought, who does that beard remind me of? Who do I know who
knows Miss Thompson?
And what difference does it make?
Nevertheless, he told himself, Boyd's beard was really an admirable fact
of nature. Ever since beards had become popular again in the
mid-sixties, and FBI agents had been permitted to wear them, Malone had
thought about growing one. But, somehow, it didn't seem right.
Now, looking at Boyd, he began to think about the prospect again.
He shrugged the notion away. There were things to do.
He picked up the phone and called Information.
"Can you give me," he said, "the number of the Desert Edge Sanitarium?"
* * * * *
The crimson blob of the setting sun was already painting the desert sky
with its customary purples and oranges by the time the little caravan
arrived at the Desert Edge Sanitarium, a square white building several
miles out of Las Vegas. Malone, in the first car, wondered briefly about
the kind of patients they catered to? People driven mad by vingt-et-un
or poker-dice? Neurotic chorus ponies? Gambling czars with delusions of
non-persecution?
Sitting in the front seat next to Boyd, he watched the unhappy San
Francisco agent manipulating the wheel. In the back seat, Queen
Elizabeth Thompson and Lady Barbara, the nurse, were located, and Her
Majesty was chattering away like a magpie.
Malone eyed the rear-view mirror to get a look at the car following them
and the two local FBI agents in it. They were, he thought, unbelievably
lucky. He had to sit and listen to the Royal Personage in the back seat.
"Of course, as soon as Parliament convenes and recognizes me," she was
saying, "I shall confer personages on all of you. Right now, the best I
can do is to knight you all, and of course that's hardly enough. But I
think I shall make Sir Kenneth the Duke of Columbia."
Sir Kenneth, Malone realized, was himself. He wondered how he'd like
being Duke of Columbia--and wouldn't the President be surprised!
"And Sir Thomas," the queen continued, "will be the Duke of ... what?
Sir Thomas?"
"Yes, Your Majesty?" Boyd said, trying to sound both eager and properly
respectful.
"What would you like to be Duke of?" she said.
"Oh," Boyd said after a second's thought, "anything that pleases Your
Majesty." But, apparently, his thoughts gave him away.
"You're from upstate New York?" the Queen said. "How very nice. Then you
must be made the Duke of Poughkeepsie."
"Thank you, Your Majesty," Boyd said. Malone thought he detected a note
of pride in the man's voice, and shot a glance at Boyd, but the agent
was driving with a serene face and an economy of motion.
_Duke of Poughkeepsie!_ Malone thought. _Hah!_
He leaned back and adjusted his fur-trimmed coat. The plume that fell
from his cap kept tickling his neck, and he brushed at it without
success.
All four of the inhabitants of the car were dressed in late Sixteenth
Century costumes, complete with ruffs and velvet and lace filigree. Her
Majesty and Lady Barbara were wearing the full skirts and small
skullcaps of the era--and on Barbara, Malone thought privately, the
low-cut gowns didn't look at all disappointing--and Sir Thomas and
Malone--Sir Kenneth, he thought sourly--were clad in doublet, hose and
long coats with fur trim and slashed sleeves. And all of them were
loaded down, weighted down, staggeringly, with gems.
Naturally, the gems were fake. But then, Malone thought, the Queen was
mad. It all balanced out in the end.
As they approached the sanitarium, Malone breathed a thankful prayer
that he'd called up to tell the head physician how they'd all be
dressed. If he hadn't--
He didn't want to think about that.
He didn't even want to pass it by hurriedly on a dark night.
The head physician, Dr. Frederic Dowson, was waiting for them on the
steps of the building. He was a tall, thin, cadaverous-looking man with
almost no hair and very deep-sunken eyes. He had the kind of face that a
gushing female would probably describe, Malone thought, as "craggy," but
it didn't look in the least attractive to Malone. Instead, it looked
tough and forbidding.
He didn't turn a hair as the magnificently robed Boyd slid from the
front seat, opened the rear door, doffed his plumed hat, and in one low
sweep made a great bow. "We are here, Your Majesty," Boyd said.
Her Majesty got out, clutching at her voluminous skirts in a worried
manner, to keep from catching them on the door jamb. "You know, Sir
Thomas," she said when she was standing free of the car, "I think we
must be related."
"Ah?" Boyd said worriedly.
"I'm certain of it, in fact," Her Majesty went on. "You look just
exactly like my poor father. Just exactly. I dare say you come from one
of the sinister branches of the family. Perhaps you are a half-brother
of mine--removed, of course."
Malone grinned, and tried to hide the expression. Boyd was looking
puzzled, then distantly angered. Nobody had ever called him illegitimate
in just that way before.
But Her Majesty was absolutely right, Malone thought. The agent had
always reminded him of someone, and now, at last, he knew exactly who.
The hair hadn't been black, either, but red.
Boyd was, in Elizabethan costume, the deadest of dead ringers for Henry
VIII.
* * * * *
Malone went up the steps to where Dr. Dowson was standing.
"I'm Malone," he said, checking a tendency to bow. "I called earlier
today. Is this William Logan of yours ready to go? We can take him back
with us in the second car."
Dr. Dowson compressed his lips and looked worried. "Come in, Mr.
Malone," he said. He turned just as the second carload of FBI agents
began emptying itself over the hospital grounds.
The entire procession filed into the hospital office, the two local
agents bringing up the rear. Since they were not a part of Her Majesty's
personal retinue, they had not been required to wear court costumes. In
a way, Malone was beginning to feel sorry for them. He himself cut a
nice figure in the outfit, he thought--rather like Errol Flynn in the
old black-and-white print of "The Prince and the Pauper."
But there was no denying that the procession looked strange. File clerks
and receptionists stopped their work to gape at the four bedizened
walkers and their plainly dressed satellites. Malone needed no
telepathic talent to tell what they were thinking.
"A whole roundup of nuts," they were thinking. "And those two fellows in
the back must be bringing them in--along with Dr. Dowson."
Malone straightened his spine. Really, he didn't see why Elizabethan
costumes had ever gone out of style. Elizabeth was back, wasn't
she--either Elizabeth II, on the throne, or Elizabeth I, right behind
him. Either way you looked at it--
When they were all inside the waiting room, Dr. Dowson said: "Now, Mr.
Malone, just what is all this about?" He rubbed his long hands together.
"I fail to see the humor of the situation."
"Humor?" Malone said.
"Doctor," Barbara Wilson began, "let me explain. You see--"
"These ridiculous costumes," Dr. Dowson said, waving a hand at them.
"You may feel that poking fun at insanity is humorous, Mr. Malone, but
let me tell you--"
"It wasn't like that at all," Boyd said.
"And," Dr. Dowson continued in a somewhat louder voice, "wanting to take
Mr. Logan away from us. Mr. Logan is a very sick man, Mr. Malone. He
should be properly cared for."
"I promise we'll take good care of him." Malone said earnestly. The
Elizabethan clothes were fine outdoors, but in a heated room one had a
tendency to sweat.
"I take leave to doubt that," Dr. Dowson said, eying their costumes
pointedly.
"Miss Wilson here," Malone volunteered, "is a trained psychiatric
nurse."
Barbara, in her gown, stepped forward. "Dr. Dowson," she said, "let me
assure you that these costumes have their purpose. We--"
"Not only that," Malone said. "There are a group of trained men from St.
Elizabeths Hospital in Washington who are going to take the best of care
of him." He said nothing whatever about Yucca Flats, or about telepathy.
Why spread around information unnecessarily?
"But I don't understand," Dr. Dowson said. "What interest could the FBI
have in an insane man?"
"That's none of your business," Malone said. He reached inside his
fur-trimmed robe and, again suppressing a tendency to bow deeply,
withdrew an impressive-looking legal document. "This," he said, "is a
court order, instructing you to hand over to us the person of one
William Logan, herein identified and described." He waved it at the
doctor. "That's your William Logan," he said, "only now he's ours."
* * * * *
Dr. Dowson took the papers and put in some time frowning at them. Then
he looked up again at Malone. "I assume that I have some discretion in
this matter," he said. "And I wonder if you realize just how ill Mr.
Logan is? We have his case histories here, and we have worked with him
for some time."
Barbara Wilson said: "But--"
"I might say that we are beginning to understand his illness," Dr.
Dowson said. "I honestly don't think it would be proper to transfer this
work to another group of therapists. It might set his illness
back--cause, as it were, a relapse. All our work could easily be
nullified."
"Please, doctor," Barbara Wilson began.
"I'm afraid the court order's got to stand," Malone said. Privately, he
felt sorry for Dr. Dowson, who was, obviously enough, a conscientious
man trying to do the best he could for his patient. But--
"I'm sorry, Dr. Dowson," he said. "We'll expect you to send all of your
data to the government psychiatrists--and, naturally, any concern for
the patient's welfare will be our concern also. The FBI isn't anxious
for its workers to get the reputation of careless men." He paused,
wondering what other bone he could throw the man. "I have no doubt that
the St. Elizabeths men will be happy to accept your co-operation," he
said at last. "But, I'm afraid that our duty is clear. William Logan
goes with us."
Dr. Dowson looked at them sourly. "Does he have to get dressed up like a
masquerade, too?" Before Malone could answer, the psychiatrist added:
"Anyhow, I don't even know you're FBI men. After all, why should I
comply with orders from a group of men, dressed insanely, whom I don't
even know?"
Malone didn't say anything. He just got up and walked to a phone on a
small table, near the wall. Next to it was a door, and Malone wondered
uncomfortably what was behind it. Maybe Dr. Dowson had a small arsenal
there, to protect his patients and prevent people from pirating them.
He looked back at the set and dialed Burris' private number in
Washington. When the director's face appeared on the screen, Malone
said: "Mr. Burris, will you please identify me to Dr. Dowson?" He looked
over at Dowson. "You recognize Mr. Andrew J. Burris, I suppose?" he
said.
Dowson nodded. His grim face showed a faint shock. He walked to the
phone, and Malone stepped back to let him talk with Burris.
"My name is Dowson," he said. "I'm psychiatric director here at Desert
Edge Sanitarium. And your men--"
"My men have orders to take a William Logan from your care," Burris
said.
"That's right," Dowson said. "But--"
While they were talking, Queen Elizabeth I sidled quietly up to Malone
and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Sir Kenneth," she whispered in the faintest of voices, "I know where
your telepathic spy is. And I know _who_ he is."
"Who?" Malone said. "What? Why? Where?" He blinked and whirled. It
couldn't be true. They couldn't solve the case so easily.
But the Queen's face was full of a majestic assurance. "He's right
there," she said, and she pointed.
Malone followed her finger.
It was aimed directly at the glowing image of Andrew J. Burris, Director
of the FBI.
[Illustration: "Not legally responsible, of course...."]
V
Malone opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Not even air.
He wasn't breathing.
He stared at Burris for a long moment, then took a breath and looked
again at Her Majesty. "The spy?" he whispered.
"That's right," she said.
"But that's--" He had to fight for control. "That's the head of the
FBI," he managed to say. "Do you mean to say he's a spy?"
Burris was saying: "... I'm afraid this is a matter of importance, Dr.
Dowson. We cannot tolerate delay. You have the court order. Obey it."
"Very well, Mr. Burris," Dowson said with an obvious lack of grace.
"I'll release him to Mr. Malone immediately, since you insist."
Malone stared, fascinated. Then he turned back to the little old lady.
"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that Andrew J. Burris is a
telepathic spy?"
"Oh, dear me," Her Majesty said, obviously aghast. "My goodness
gracious. Is that Mr. Burris on the screen?"
"It is," Malone assured her. A look out of the corner of his eye told
him that neither Burris, in Washington, nor Dowson or any others in the
room, had heard any of the conversation. Malone lowered his whisper some
more, just in case. "That's the head of the FBI," he said.
"Well, then," Her Majesty said, "Mr. Burris couldn't possibly be a spy,
then, could he? Not if he's the head of the FBI. Of course not. Mr.
Burris simply isn't a spy. He isn't the type. Forget all about Mr.
Burris."
"I can't," Malone said at random. "I work for him." He closed his eyes.
The room, he had discovered, was spinning slightly. "Now," he said,
"you're sure he's not a spy?"
"Certainly I'm sure," she said, with her most regal tones. "Do you doubt
the word of your sovereign?"
"Not exactly," Malone said. Truthfully, he wasn't at all sure. Not at
all. But why tell that to the Queen?
"Shame on you," she said. "You shouldn't even think such things. After
all, I am the Queen, aren't I?" But there was a sweet, gentle smile on
her face when she spoke; she did not seem to be really irritated.
"Sure you are," Malone said. "But--"
"Malone!" It was Burris' voice, from the phone. Malone spun around.
"Take Mr. Logan," Burris said, "and get going. There's been enough delay
as it is."
"Yes, sir," Malone said. "Right away, sir. Anything else?"
"That's all," Burris said. "Good night." The screen blanked.
There was a little silence.
"All right, doctor," Boyd said. He looked every inch a king, and Malone
knew exactly what king. "Bring him out."
Dr. Dowson heaved a great sigh. "Very well," he said heavily. "But I
want it known that I resent this high-handed treatment, and I shall
write a letter complaining of it." He pressed a button on an instrument
panel in his desk. "Bring Mr. Logan in," he said.
Malone wasn't in the least worried about the letter. Burris, he knew,
would take care of anything like that. And, besides, he had other things
to think about.
The door to the next room had opened almost immediately, and two husky,
white-clad men were bringing in a strait-jacketed figure whose arms were
wrapped against his chest, while the jacket's extra-long sleeves were
tied behind his back. He walked where the attendants led him, but his
eyes weren't looking at anything in the room. They stared at something
far away and invisible, an impalpable shifting nothingness somewhere in
the infinite distances beyond the world.
For the first time, Malone felt the chill of panic. Here, he thought,
was insanity of a very real and frightening kind. Queen Elizabeth
Thompson was one thing--and she was almost funny, and likable, after
all. But William Logan was something else, and something that sent a
wave of cold shivering into the room.
What made it worse was that Logan wasn't a man, but a boy, barely
nineteen. Malone had known that, of course--but seeing it was something
different. The lanky, awkward figure wrapped in a hospital strait jacket
was horrible, and the smooth, unconcerned face was, somehow, worse.
There was no threat in that face, no terror or anger or fear. It was
merely--a blank.
It was not a human face. Its complete lack of emotion or expression
could have belonged to a sleeping child of ten--or to a member of a
different race. Malone looked at the boy, and looked away.
Was it possible that Logan knew what he was thinking?
_Answer me_, he thought, directly at the still boy.
There was no reply, none at all. Malone forced himself to look away. But
the air in the room seemed to have become much colder.
The attendants stood on either side of him, waiting. For one long second
no one moved, and then Dr. Dowson reached into his desk drawer and
produced a sheaf of papers.
"If you'll sign these for the government," he said, "you may have Mr.
Logan. There seems little else that I can do, Mr. Malone--in spite of my
earnest pleas--"
"I'm sorry," Malone said. After all, he _needed_ Logan, didn't he? After
a look at the boy, he wasn't sure any more--but the Queen had said she
wanted him, and the Queen's word was law. Or what passed for law,
anyhow, at least for the moment.
Malone took the papers and looked them over. There was nothing special
about them; they were merely standard release forms, absolving the staff
and management of Desert Edge Sanitarium from every conceivable
responsibility under any conceivable circumstances, as far as William
Logan was concerned. Dr. Dowson gave Malone a look that said: "Very
well, Mr. Malone; I will play Pilate and wash my hands of the
matter--but you needn't think I like it." It was a lot for one look to
say, but Dr. Dowson's dark and sunken eyes got the message across with
no loss in transmission. As a matter of fact, there seemed to be more
coming--a much less printable message was apparently on the way through
those glittering, sad and angry eyes.
Malone avoided them nervously, and went over the papers again instead.
At last he signed them and handed them back. "Thanks for your
co-operation, Dr. Dowson," he said briskly, feeling ten kinds of a
traitor.
"Not at all," Dowson said bitterly. "Mr. Logan is now in your custody. I
must trust you to take good care of him."
"The best care we can," Malone said. It didn't seem sufficient. He
added: "The best possible care, doctor," and tried to look dependable
and trustworthy, like a Boy Scout. He was aware that the effort failed
miserably.
At his signal, the two plainclothes FBI men took over from the
attendants. They marched Logan out to their car, and Malone led the
procession back to Boyd's automobile, a procession that consisted--in
order--of Sir Kenneth Malone, prospective Duke of Columbia, Queen
Elizabeth I, Lady Barbara, prospective Duchess of an unspecified county,
and Sir Thomas Boyd, prospective Duke of Poughkeepsie. Malone hummed a
little of "Pomp and Circumstance" as they walked; somehow, he thought it
was called for.
They piled into the car, Boyd at the wheel with Malone next to him, and
the two ladies in back, with Queen Elizabeth sitting directly behind Sir
Thomas. Boyd started the engine and they turned and roared off.
"Well," said Her Majesty with an air of great complacence, "that's that.
That makes six of us."
Malone looked around the car. He counted the people. There were four. He
said, puzzled: "Six?"
"That's right, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "You have it exactly.
Six."
"You mean six telepaths?" Sir Thomas asked in a deferent tone of voice.
"Certainly I do," Her Majesty replied. "We telepaths, you know, must
stick together. That's the reason I got poor little Willie out of that
sanitarium of his, you know--and, of course, the others will be joining
us."
"Don't you think it's time for your nap, dear?" Lady Barbara put in
suddenly.
"My _what_?" It was obvious that Queen Elizabeth was Not Amused.
"Your nap, dear," Lady Barbara said.
"Don't call me 'dear,'" Her Majesty snapped.
"I'm sorry, Your Majesty," Barbara murmured. "But really--"
"My dear girl," Her Majesty said, "I am not a child. I am your
sovereign. Do try to have a little respect. Why, I remember when
Shakespeare used to say to me--but that's no matter, not now."
"About those telepaths--" Boyd began.
"Telepaths," Her Majesty said. "Ah, yes. We must all stick together. In
the hospital, you know, we had a little joke--the patients for Insulin
Shock Therapy used to say: 'If we don't stick together, we'll all be
stuck separately.' Do you see, Sir Thomas?"
"But," Sir Kenneth Malone said, trying desperately to return to the
point. "_Six?_" He had counted them up in his mind. Burris had mentioned
one found in St. Elizabeths, and two more picked up later. With Queen
Elizabeth, and now William Logan, that made five.
Unless the Queen was counting him in. There didn't seem any good reason
why not.
"Oh, no," Her Majesty said with a little trill of laughter, "not you,
Sir Kenneth. I meant Mr. Miles."
Sir Thomas Boyd asked: "Mr. Miles?"
"That's right," Her Majesty said. "His name is Barry Miles, and your FBI
men found him an hour ago in New Orleans. They're bringing him to Yucca
Flats to meet the rest of us; isn't that nice?"
Lady Barbara cleared her throat.
"It really isn't necessary for you to try to get my attention, dear,"
the Queen said. "After all, I do know what you're thinking."
Lady Barbara blinked. "I still want to suggest, respectfully, about that
nap--" she began.
"My dear girl," the Queen said, with the faintest trace of impatience,
"I do not feel the least bit tired, and this is such an exciting day
that I just don't want to miss any of it. Besides, I've already told you
I don't want a nap. It isn't polite to be insistent to your Queen--no
matter how strongly you feel about a matter. I'm sure you'll learn to
understand that, dear."
Lady Barbara opened her mouth, shut it again, and opened it once more.
"My goodness," she said.
"That's the idea," Her Majesty said approvingly. "Think before you
speak--and then don't speak. It really isn't necessary, since I know
what you're thinking."
Malone said grimly: "About this new telepath ... this Barry Miles. Did
they find him--"
"In a nut-house?" Her Majesty said sweetly. "Why, of course, Sir
Kenneth. You were quite right when you thought that telepaths went
insane because they had a sense they couldn't effectively use, and
because no one believed them. How would you feel, if nobody believed you
could see?"
"Strange," Malone admitted.
"There," Her Majesty said. "You see? Telepaths do go insane--it's sort
of an occupational disease. Of course, not all of them are insane."
"Not all of them?" Malone felt the faint stirrings of hope. Perhaps they
would turn up a telepath yet who was completely sane and rational.
"There's me, of course," Her Majesty said.
Lady Barbara gulped audibly. Boyd said nothing, but gripped the wheel of
the car more tightly.
And Malone thought to himself: _That's right. There's Queen
Elizabeth--who says she isn't crazy._
And then he thought of one more sane telepath. But the knowledge did not
make him feel any better.
It was, of course, the spy.
How many more are going to turn up? Malone wondered.
"Oh, that's about all of us," the Queen said. "There is one more, but
she's in a hospital in Honolulu, and your men won't find her until
tomorrow."
[Illustration: Sir Thomas Boyd ... looking majestic.]
Boyd turned. "Do you mean you can foretell the future, too?" he asked in
a strained voice.
Lady Barbara screamed: "Keep your eyes on the wheel and your hands on
the road!"
"What?" Boyd said.
There was a terrific blast of noise, and a truck went by in the opposite
direction. The driver, a big, ugly man with no hair on his head, leaned
out to curse at the quartet, but his mouth remained open. He stared at
the four Elizabethans and said nothing at all as he whizzed by.
"What was that?" Boyd asked faintly.
"That," Malone snapped, "was a truck. And it was due entirely to the
mercy of God that we didn't hit it. Barbara's right. Keep your eyes on
the wheel and your hands on the road." He paused and thought that over.
Then he said: "Does that mean anything at all?"
"Lady Barbara was confused by the excitement," the Queen said calmly.
"It's all right now, dear."
Lady Barbara blinked across the seat. "I was--afraid," she said.
"It's all right," the Queen said. "I'll take care of you."
"This," Malone announced to no one in particular, "is ridiculous."
* * * * *
Boyd swept the car around a curve and concentrated grimly on the road.
After a second the Queen said: "Since you're still thinking about the
question, I'll answer you."
"What question?" Malone said, thoroughly baffled.
"Sir Thomas asked me if I could foretell the future," the Queen said
equably. "Of course I can't. That's silly. Just because I'm immortal and
I'm a telepath, don't go hog-wild."
"Then how did you know the FBI agents were going to find the girl in
Honolulu tomorrow?" Boyd said.
"Because," the Queen said, "they're thinking about looking in the
hospital tomorrow, and when they look they'll certainly find her."
Boyd said: "Oh," and was silent.
But Malone had a grim question. "Why didn't you tell me about these
other telepaths before?" he said. "You could have saved us a lot of
work."
"Oh, heavens to Betsy, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty exclaimed. "How could
I? After all, the proper precautions had to be taken first, didn't they?
I told you all the others were crazy--_really_ crazy, I mean. And they
just wouldn't be safe without the proper precautions."
"Perhaps you ought to go back to the hospital, too," Barbara said, and
added: "Your Majesty," just in time.
"But if I did, dear," Her Majesty said, "you'd lose your chance to
become a Duchess, and that wouldn't be at all nice. Besides, I'm having
so much _fun_!" She trilled a laugh again. "Riding around like this is
just wonderful!" she said.
_And you're important for national security_, Malone said to himself.
"That's right, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said. "The country needs me, and
I'm happy to serve. That is the job of a sovereign."
"Fine," Malone said, hoping it was.
"Well, then," said Her Majesty, "that settles that. We have a whole
night ahead of us, Sir Kenneth. What do you say we make a night _of_
it?"
"Knight who?" Malone said. He felt confused again. It seemed as if he
was always feeling confused lately.
"Don't be silly, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "There are times and
times."
"Sure," Malone said at random. _And time and a half_, he thought.
_Possibly for overtime._ "What is Your Majesty thinking of?" he asked
with trepidation.
"I want to take a tour of Las Vegas," Her Majesty said primly.
Lady Barbara shook her head. "I'm afraid that's not possible, Your
Majesty," she said.
"And why not, pray?" Her Majesty said. "No. I can see what you're
thinking. It's not safe to let me go wandering around in a strange city,
and particularly if that city is Las Vegas. Well, dear, I can assure you
that it's perfectly safe."
"We've got work to do," Boyd contributed.
Malone said nothing. He stared bleakly at the hood ornament on the car.
"I have made my wishes known," the Queen said.
Lady Barbara said: "But--"
Boyd, however, knew when to give in. "Yes, Your Majesty," he said.
She smiled graciously at him, and answered Lady Barbara only by a slight
lift of her regal eyebrow.
Malone had been thinking about something else. When he was sure he had a
firm grip on himself he turned. "Your Majesty, tell me something," he
said. "You can read my mind, right?"
"Well, of course, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "I thought I'd proved
that to you. And, as for what you're about to ask--"
"No," Malone said. "Please. Let me ask the questions before you answer
them. It's less confusing that way. I'll cheerfully admit that it
shouldn't be--but it is. Please?"
"Certainly, Sir Kenneth, if you wish," the Queen said. She folded her
hands in her lap and waited quietly.
* * * * *
"O.K.," Malone said. "Now, if you can read my mind, then you must know
that I don't _really_ believe that you are Queen Elizabeth of England.
The First, I mean."
"Mr. Malone," Barbara Wilson said suddenly. "I--"
"It's all right, child," the Queen said. "He doesn't disturb me. And I
do wish you'd call him Sir Kenneth. That's his title, you know."
"Now that's what I mean," Malone said. "Why do you want us to _act_ as
if we believe you, when you know we don't?"
"Because that's the way people do act," the Queen said calmly. "Very few
people really believe that their so-called superiors _are_ superior.
Almost none of them do, in fact."
"Now wait a minute," Boyd began.
"No, no, it's quite true," the Queen said, "and, unpleasant as it may
be, we must learn to face the truth. That's the path of sanity." Lady
Barbara made a strangled noise but Her Majesty continued, unruffled.
"Nearly everybody suffers from the silly delusion that he's possibly
equal to, but very probably superior to, everybody else ... my
goodness, where would we be if that were true?"
Malone felt that a comment was called for, and he made one. "Who knows?"
he said.
"All the things people do toward their superiors," the Queen said, "are
done for social reasons. For instance, Sir Kenneth: you don't realize
fully how you feel about Mr. Burris."
"He's a nice guy," Malone said. "I work for him. He's a good Director of
the FBI."
"Of course," the Queen said. "But you believe you could do the job just
as well, or perhaps a little better."
"I do not," Malone said angrily.
Her Majesty reserved a dignified silence.
After a while Malone said: "And what if I do?"
"Why, nothing," Her Majesty said. "You don't think Mr. Burris is any
smarter or better than you are--but you treat him as if you did. All I
am insisting on is the same treatment."
"But if we don't believe--" Boyd began.
"Bless you," Her Majesty said, "I can't help the way you _think_, but,
as Queen, I do have some control over the way you _act_."
Malone thought it over. "You have a point there," he said at last.
Barbara said: "But--"
"Yes, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said, "I do." She seemed to be ignoring
Lady Barbara. Perhaps, Malone thought, she was still angry over the nap
affair. "It's not that," the Queen said.
"Not what?" Boyd said, thoroughly confused.
"Not the naps," the Queen said.
"What naps?" Boyd said.
Malone said: "I was thinking--"
"Good," Boyd said. "Keep it up. I'm driving. Everything's going to hell
around me, but I'm driving."
A red light appeared ahead. Boyd jammed on the brakes with somewhat more
than the necessary force, and Malone was thrown forward with a grunt.
Behind him there were two ladylike squeals.
Malone struggled upright. "Barbara?" he called. "Are you all right--"
Then he remembered the Queen.
"It's all right," Her Majesty said. "I can understand your concern for
Lady Barbara." She smiled at Malone as he turned.
Malone gaped at her. Of course she knew what he thought about Barbara;
she'd been reading his mind. And, apparently, she was on his side. That
was good, even though it made him slightly nervous to think about.
"Now," the Queen said suddenly, "what about tonight?"
"Tonight?"
"Yes, of course," the Queen said. She smiled, and put up a hand to pat
at her white hair under the Elizabethan skullcap. "I think I should like
to go to the Palace," she said. "After all, isn't that where a Queen
should be?"
Boyd said, in a kind of explosion: "London? England?"
"Oh, dear me--" the Queen began, and Barbara said:
"I'm afraid that I simply can't allow anything like that. Overseas--"
"I didn't mean overseas, dear," Her Majesty said. "Sir Kenneth, please
explain to these people."
The Palace, Malone knew, was more properly known as the Golden Palace.
It was right in Las Vegas--convenient to all sources of money. As a
matter of fact, it was one of the biggest gambling houses along the Las
Vegas strip, a veritable chaos of wheels, cards, dice, chips and other
such devices. Malone explained all this to the others, wondering
meanwhile why Miss Thompson wanted to go there.
"_Not_ Miss Thompson, _please_, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said.
"Not Miss Thompson what?" Boyd said. "What's going on anyhow?"
"She's reading my mind," Malone said.
"Well, then," Boyd snapped, "tell her to keep it to herself." The car
started up again with a roar and Malone and the others were thrown
around again, this time toward the back. There was a chorus of groans
and squeals, and they were on their way once more.
* * * * *
"To reply to your question, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said.
Lady Barbara said, with some composure: "What question ... Your
Majesty?"
The Queen nodded regally at her. "Sir Kenneth was wondering why I wished
to go to the Golden Palace," she said. "And my reply is this: it is none
of your business why I want to go there. After all, is my word law, or
isn't it?"
There didn't seem to be a good enough answer to that, Malone thought
sadly. He kept quiet and was relieved to note that the others did the
same. However, after a second he thought of something else.
"Your Majesty," he began carefully, "we've got to go to Yucca Flats
tomorrow. Remember?"
"Certainly," the Queen said. "My memory is quite good, thank you. But
that is tomorrow morning. We have the rest of the night left. It's only
a little after nine, you know."
"Heavens," Barbara said. "Is it that late?"
"It's even later," Boyd said sourly. "It's much later than you think."
"And it's getting later all the time," Malone added. "Pretty soon the
sun will go out and all life on earth will end. Won't that be nice and
peaceful?"
"I'm looking forward to it," Boyd said.
"I'm not," Barbara said. "But I've got to get some sleep tonight, if I'm
going to be any good at all tomorrow."
_You're pretty good right now_, Malone thought, but he didn't say a
word. He felt the Queen's eye on him but didn't turn around. After all,
she was on his side--wasn't she?
At any rate, she didn't say anything.
"Perhaps it would be best," Barbara said, "if you and I ... Your Majesty
... just went home and rested up. Some other time, then, when there's
nothing vital to do, we could--"
"No," the Queen said. "We couldn't. Really, Lady Barbara, how often will
I have to remind you of the duties you owe your sovereign--not the least
of which is obedience, as dear old Ben used to say."
"Ben?" Malone said, and immediately wished he hadn't.
"Jonson, dear boy," the Queen said. "Really a remarkable man--and such a
good friend to poor Will. Why, did you ever hear the story of how he
actually paid Will's rent in London once upon a time? That was while
Will and that Anne of his were having one of their arguments, of course.
I didn't tell you that story, did I?"
"No," Malone said truthfully, but his voice was full of foreboding. "If
I might remind Your Majesty of the subject," he added tentatively, "I
should like to say--"
"Remind me of the subject!" the Queen said, obviously delighted. "What a
lovely pun! And how much better because purely unconscious! My, my, Sir
Kenneth, I never suspected you of a pointed sense of humor--could you be
a descendant of Sir Richard Greene, I wonder?"
"I doubt it," Malone said. "My ancestors were all poor but Irish." He
paused. "Or, if you prefer, Irish but poor." Another pause, and then he
added: "If that means anything at all. Which I doubt."
"In any case," the Queen said, her eyes twinkling, "you were about to
enter a new objection to our little visit to the Palace, were you not?"
Malone admitted as much. "I really think that--"
Her eyes grew suddenly cold. "If I hear any more objections, Sir
Kenneth, I shall not only rescind your knighthood and--when I regain my
rightful kingdom--deny you your dukedom, but I shall refuse to
co-operate any further in the business of Project Isle."
Malone turned cold. His face, he knew without glancing in the mirror,
was white and pale. He thought of what Burris would do to him if he
didn't follow through on his assigned job.
Even if he wasn't as good as Burris thought he was, he really liked
being an FBI agent. He didn't want to be fired.
And Burris had said: "_Give her anything she wants._"
He gulped and tried to make his face look normal. "All right," he said.
"Fine. We'll go to the Palace."
He tried to ignore the pall of apprehension that fell over the car.
VI
The management of the Golden Palace had been in business for many long,
dreary, profitable years, and each member of the staff thought he or she
had seen just about everything there was to be seen. And those that were
new felt an obligation to _look_ as if they'd seen everything.
Therefore, when the entourage of Queen Elizabeth I strolled into the
main salon, not a single eye was batted. Not a single gasp was heard.
Nevertheless, the staff kept a discreet eye on the crew. Drunks, rich
men or Arabian millionaires were all familiar. But a group out of the
Sixteenth Century was something else again.
Malone almost strutted, conscious of the sidelong glances the group was
drawing. But it was obvious that Sir Thomas was the major attraction.
Even if you could accept the idea of people in strange costumes, the
sight of a living, breathing absolute duplicate of King Henry VIII was a
little too much to take. It has been reported that two ladies named
Jane, and one named Catherine, came down with sudden headaches and left
the salon within five minutes of the group's arrival.
Malone felt he knew, however, why he wasn't drawing his full share of
attention. He felt a little out of place. The costume was one thing,
and, to tell the truth, he was beginning to enjoy it. Even with the
weight of the stuff, it was going to be a wrench to go back to
single-breasted suits and plain white shirts. But he did feel that he
should have been carrying a sword.
Instead, he had a .44 Magnum Colt snuggled beneath his left armpit.
Somehow, a .44 Magnum Colt didn't seem as romantic as a sword. Malone
pictured himself saying: "Take that, varlet." Was varlet what you called
them? he wondered. Maybe it was valet.
"Take that, valet," he muttered. No, that sounded even worse. Oh, well,
he could look it up later.
The truth was that he had been born in the wrong century. He could
imagine himself at the Mermaid Tavern, hob-nobbing with Shakespeare and
all the rest of them. He wondered if Sir Richard Greene would be there.
Then he wondered who Sir Richard Greene was.
Behind Sir Kenneth, Sir Thomas Boyd strode, looking majestic, as if he
were about to fling purses of gold to the citizenry. As a matter of
fact, Malone thought, he was. They all were.
Purses of good old United States of America gold.
Behind Sir Thomas came Queen Elizabeth and her Lady-in-Waiting, Lady
Barbara Wilson. They made a beautiful foursome.
"The roulette table," Her Majesty said with dignity. "Precede me."
They pushed their way through the crowd. Most of the customers were
either excited enough, drunk enough, or both to see nothing in the least
incongruous about a Royal Family of the Tudors invading the Golden
Palace. Very few of them, as a matter of fact, seemed to notice the
group.
They were roulette players. They noticed nothing but the table and the
wheel. Malone wondered what they were thinking about, decided to ask
Queen Elizabeth, and then decided against it. He felt it would make him
nervous to know.
Her Majesty took a handful of chips.
The handful was worth, Malone knew, exactly five thousand dollars.
That, he'd thought, ought to last them an evening, even in the Golden
Palace. In the center of the strip, inside the city limits of Las Vegas
itself, the five thousand would have lasted much longer--but Her Majesty
wanted the Palace, and the Palace it was.
Malone began to smile. Since he couldn't avoid the evening, he was
determined to enjoy it. It was sort of fun, in its way, indulging a
sweet harmless old lady. And there was nothing they could do until the
next morning, anyhow.
His indulgent smile faded very suddenly.
Her Majesty plunked the entire handful of chips--_five thousand
dollars!_ Malone thought dazedly--onto the table. "Five thousand," she
said in clear, cool measured tones, "on Number One."
The croupier blinked only slightly. He bowed. "Yes, Your Majesty," he
said.
Malone was briefly thankful, in the midst of his black horror, that he
had called the management and told them that the Queen's plays were
backed by the United States Government. Her Majesty was going to get
unlimited credit--and a good deal of awed and somewhat puzzled respect.
Malone watched the spin begin with mixed feelings. There was five
thousand dollars riding on the little ball. But, after all, Her Majesty
was a telepath. Did that mean anything?
He hadn't decided by the time the wheel stopped, and by then he didn't
have to decide.
"Thirty-four," the croupier said tonelessly. "Red, Even and High."
He raked in the chips with a nonchalant air.
Malone felt as if he had swallowed his stomach. Boyd and Lady Barbara,
standing nearby, had absolutely no expressions on their faces. Malone
needed no telepath to tell him what they were thinking.
They were exactly the same as he was. They were incapable of thought.
But Her Majesty never batted an eyelash. "Come, Sir Kenneth," she said.
"Let's go on to the poker tables."
She swept out. Her entourage followed her, shambling a little, and
blank-eyed. Malone was still thinking about the five thousand dollars.
Oh, well, Burris had said to give the lady anything she wanted. _But!_
he thought. _Did she have to play for royal stakes?_
"I am, after all, a Queen," she whispered back to him.
Malone thought about the National Debt. He wondered if a million more or
less would make any real difference. There would be questions asked in
committees about it. He tried to imagine himself explaining the evening
to a group of congressmen. "Well, you see, gentlemen, there was this
roulette wheel--"
He gave it up.
Then he wondered how much hotter the water was going to get, and he
stopped thinking altogether in self-defense.
* * * * *
In the next room, there were scattered tables. At one, a poker game was
in full swing. Only five were playing; one, by his white-tie-and-tails
uniform, was easily recognizable as a house dealer. The other four were
all men, one of them in full cowboy regalia. The Tudors descended upon
them with great suddenness, and the house dealer looked up and almost
lost his cigarette.
"We haven't any money, Your Majesty," Malone whispered.
She smiled up at him sweetly, and then drew him aside. "If you were a
telepath," she said, "how would _you_ play poker?"
Malone thought about that for a minute, and then turned to look for
Boyd. But Sir Thomas didn't even have to be given instructions. "Another
five hundred?" he said.
Her Majesty sniffed audibly. "Another five thousand," she said regally.
Boyd looked Malone-wards. Malone looked defeated.
Boyd turned with a small sigh and headed for the cashier's booth. Three
minutes later, he was back with a fat fistful of chips.
"Five grand?" Malone whispered to him.
"Ten," Boyd said. "I know when to back a winner."
Her Majesty went over to the table. The dealer had regained control, but
looked up at them with a puzzled stare.
"You know," the Queen said, with an obvious attempt to put the man at
his ease, "I've always wanted to visit a gambling hall."
"Sure, lady," the dealer said. "Naturally."
"May I sit down?"
The dealer looked at the group. "How about your friends?" he said
cautiously.
The Queen shook her head. "They would rather watch, I'm sure."
For once Malone blessed the woman's telepathic talent. He, Boyd and
Barbara Wilson formed a kind of Guard of Honor around the chair which
Her Majesty occupied. Boyd handed over the new pile of chips, and was
favored with a royal smile.
"This is a poker game, ma'am," the dealer said to her, quietly.
"I know, I know," Her Majesty said with a trace of testiness. "Roll
'em."
The dealer stared at her popeyed. Next to her, the gentleman in the
cowboy outfit turned. "Ma'am, are you from around these parts?" he said.
"Oh, no," the Queen said. "I'm from England."
"England?" The cowboy looked puzzled. "You don't seem to have any
accent, ma'am," he said at last.
"Certainly not," the Queen said. "I've lost that; I've been over here a
great many years."
Malone hoped fervently that Her Majesty wouldn't mention just how many
years. He didn't think he could stand it, and he was almost grateful for
the cowboy's nasal twang.
"Oil?" he said.
"Oh, no," Her Majesty said. "The Government is providing this money."
"The Government?"
"Certainly," Her Majesty said. "The FBI, you know."
There was a long silence.
At last, the dealer said: "Five-card draw your game, ma'am?"
"If you please," Her Majesty said.
The dealer shrugged and, apparently, commended his soul to a gambler's
God. He passed the pasteboards around the table with the air of one who
will have nothing more to do with the world.
Her Majesty picked up her hand.
[Illustration: "May I raise ... five thousand?"]
"The ante's ten, ma'am," the dealer said softly.
Without looking, Her Majesty removed a ten-dollar chip from the pile
before her and sent it spinning to the middle of the table.
The dealer opened his mouth, but said nothing. Malone, meanwhile, was
peering over the Queen's shoulder.
She held a pair of nines, a four, a three and a Jack.
The man to the left of the dealer announced glumly: "Can't open."
The next man grinned. "Open for twenty," he said.
Malone closed his eyes. He heard the cowboy say: "I'm in," and he opened
his eyes again. The Queen was pushing two ten-dollar chips toward the
center of the table.
The next man dropped, and the dealer looked round the table. "How many?"
The man who couldn't open took three cards. The man who'd opened for
twenty stood pat. Malone shuddered invisibly. That, he figured, meant at
least a straight. And Queen Elizabeth Thompson was going in against a
straight or better with a pair of nines, Jack high.
For the first time, it was borne in on Malone that being a telepath did
not necessarily mean that you were a good poker player. Even if you knew
what every other person at the table held, you could still make a whole
lot of stupid mistakes.
He looked nervously at Queen Elizabeth, but her face was serene.
Apparently she'd been following the thoughts of the poker players, and
not concentrating on him at all. That was a relief. He felt, for the
first time in days, as if he could think freely.
The cowboy said: "Two," and took them. It was Her Majesty's turn.
"I'll take two," she said, and threw away the three and four. It left
her with the nine of spades and the nine of hearts, and the Jack of
diamonds.
These were joined, in a matter of seconds, by two bright new cards: the
six of clubs and the three of hearts.
Malone closed his eyes. Oh, well, he thought.
It was only thirty bucks down the drain. Practically nothing.
Of course Her Majesty dropped at once; knowing what the other players
held, she knew she couldn't beat them after the draw. But she did like
to take long chances, Malone thought miserably. Imagine trying to fill a
full house on one pair!
* * * * *
Slowly, as the minutes passed, the pile of chips before Her Majesty
dwindled. Once Malone saw her win with two pair against a reckless man
trying to fill a straight on the other side of the table. But whatever
was going on, Her Majesty's face was as calm as if she were asleep.
Malone's worked overtime. If the Queen hadn't been losing so obviously,
the dealer might have mistaken the play of naked emotion across his
visage for a series of particularly obvious signals.
An hour went by. Barbara left to find a ladies' lounge where she could
sit down and try to relax. Fascinated in a horrible sort of way, both
Malone and Boyd stood, rooted to the spot, while hand after hand went
by and the ten thousand dollars dwindled to half that, to a quarter, and
even less--
Her Majesty, it seemed, was a mighty poor poker player.
The ante had been raised by this time. Her Majesty was losing one
hundred dollars a hand, even before the betting began. But she showed
not the slightest indication to stop.
"We've got to get up in the morning," Malone announced to no one in
particular, when he thought he couldn't possibly stand another half hour
of the game.
"So we do," Her Majesty said with a little regretful sigh. "Very well,
then. Just one more hand."
"It's a shame to lose you," the cowboy said to her, quite sincerely. He
had been winning steadily ever since Her Majesty sat down, and Malone
thought that the man should, by this time, be awfully grateful to the
United States Government. Somehow, he doubted that this gratitude
existed.
Malone wondered if she should be allowed to stay for one more hand.
There was, he estimated, about two thousand dollars in front of her.
Then he wondered how he was going to stop her.
The cards were dealt.
The first man said quietly: "Open for two hundred."
Malone looked at the Queen's hand. It contained the Ace, King, Queen and
ten of clubs--and the seven of spades.
_Oh, no_, he thought. _She couldn't possibly be thinking of filling a
flush._
He knew perfectly well that she was.
The second man said: "And raise two hundred."
The Queen equably tossed--counting, Malone thought, the ante--five
hundred into the pot.
The cowboy muttered to himself for a second, and finally shoved in his
money.
"I think I'll raise it another five hundred," the Queen said calmly.
Malone wanted to die of shock. Unfortunately, he remained alive and
watching. He was the last man, after some debate internal, to shove a
total of one thousand dollars into the pot.
"Cards?" said the dealer.
The first man said: "One."
It was too much to hope for, Malone thought. If that first man were
trying to fill a straight or a flush, maybe he wouldn't make it. And
maybe something final would happen to all the other players. But that
was the only way he could see for Her Majesty to win.
The card was dealt. The second man stood pat and Malone's green tinge
became obvious to the veriest dunce. The cowboy, on Her Majesty's right,
asked for a card, received it and sat back without a trace of
expression.
The Queen said: "I'll try one for size." She'd picked up poker lingo,
and the basic rules of the game, Malone realized, from the other
players--or possibly from someone at the hospital itself, years ago.
He wished she'd picked up something less dangerous instead, like a love
of big-game hunting, or stunt-flying.
But no. It had to be poker.
The Queen threw away her seven of spades, showing more sense than Malone
had given her credit for at any time during the game. She let the other
card fall and didn't look at it.
She smiled up at Malone and Boyd. "Live dangerously," she said gaily.
Malone gave her a hollow laugh.
The last man drew one card, too, and the betting began.
The Queen's remaining thousand was gone before an eye could notice it.
She turned to Boyd.
"Sir Thomas," she said. "Another five thousand, please. At once."
Boyd said nothing at all, but marched off. Malone noticed, however, that
his step was neither as springy nor as confident as it had been before.
For himself, Malone was sure that he could not walk at all.
Maybe, he thought hopefully, the floor would open up and swallow them
all. He tried to imagine explaining the loss of twenty thousand dollars
to Burris and some congressmen, and after that he watched the floor
narrowly, hoping for the smallest hint of a crack in the palazzo marble.
* * * * *
"May I raise the whole five thousand?" the Queen said.
"It's O.K. with me," the dealer said. "How about the rest of you?"
The four grunts he got expressed a suppressed eagerness. The Queen took
the new chips Boyd had brought her and shoved them into the center of
the table with a fine, careless gesture of her hand. She smiled gaily at
everybody. "Seeing me?" she said.
Everybody was.
"Well, you see, it was this way," Malone muttered to himself,
rehearsing. He half-thought that one of the others would raise again,
but no one did. After all, each of them must be convinced that he held a
great hand, and though raising had gone on throughout the hand, each
must now be afraid of going the least little bit too far and scaring the
others out.
"Mr. Congressman," Malone muttered, "there's this game called poker. You
play it with cards and money. Chiefly money."
That wasn't any good.
"You've been called," the dealer said to the first man, who'd opened the
hand a year or so before.
"Why, sure," the player said, and laid down a pair of aces, a pair of
threes--and a four. One of the threes, and the four, were clubs. That
reduced the already improbable chances of the Queen's coming up with a
flush.
"Sorry," said the second man, and laid down a straight with a single
gesture. The straight was nine-high and there were no clubs in it.
Malone felt devoutly thankful for that.
The second man reached for the money but, under the popeyed gaze of the
dealer, the fifth man laid down another straight--this one ten-high. The
nine was a club. Malone felt the odds go down, right in his own stomach.
And now the cowboy put down his cards. The King of diamonds. The King
of hearts. The Jack of diamonds. The Jack of spades. And--the Jack of
hearts.
Full house. "Well," said the cowboy. "I suppose that does it."
The Queen said: "Please. One moment."
The cowboy stopped halfway in his reach for the enormous pile of chips.
The Queen laid down her four clubs--Ace, King, Queen and ten--and for
the first time flipped over her fifth card.
It was the Jack of clubs.
"My God," the cowboy said, and it sounded like a prayer. "A royal
flush."
"Naturally," the Queen said. "What else?"
Her Majesty calmly scooped up the tremendous pile of chips. The cowboy's
hands fell away. Five mouths were open around the table.
Her Majesty stood up. She smiled sweetly at the men around the table.
"Thank you very much, gentlemen," she said. She handed the chips to
Malone, who took them in nerveless fingers. "Sir Kenneth," she said, "I
hereby appoint you temporary Chancellor of the Exchequer--at least until
Parliament convenes."
There was, Malone thought, at least thirty-five thousand dollars in the
pile. He could think of nothing to say.
So, instead of using up words, he went and cashed in the chips. For
once, he realized, the Government had made money on an investment. It
was probably the first time since 1775.
Malone thought vaguely that the Government ought to make more
investments like the one he was cashing in. If it did, the National Debt
could be wiped out in a matter of days.
He brought the money back. Boyd and the Queen were waiting for him, but
Barbara was still in the ladies' lounge. "She's on the way out," the
Queen informed him, and, sure enough, in a minute they saw the figure
approaching them. Malone smiled at her, and, tentatively, she smiled
back. They began the long march to the exit of the club, slowly and
regally, though not by choice.
The crowd, it seemed, wouldn't let them go. Malone never found out, then
or later, how the news of Her Majesty's winnings had gone through the
place so fast, but everyone seemed to know about it. The Queen was the
recipient of several low bows and a few drunken curtsies, and, when they
reached the front door at last, the doorman said in a most respectful
tone: "Good evening, Your Majesty."
The Queen positively beamed at him. So, to his own great surprise, did
Sir Kenneth Malone.
Outside, it was about four in the morning. They climbed into the car and
headed back toward the hotel.
* * * * *
Malone was the first to speak. "How did you know that was a Jack of
clubs?" he said in a strangled sort of voice.
The little old lady said calmly: "He was cheating."
"The dealer?" Malone asked.
The little old lady nodded.
"In _your_ favor?"
"He couldn't have been cheating," Boyd said at the same instant. "Why
would he want to give you all that money?"
The little old lady shook her head. "He didn't want to give it to me,"
she said. "He wanted to give it to the man in the cowboy's suit. His
name is Elliott, by the way--Bernard L. Elliott. And he comes from
Weehawken. But he pretends to be a Westerner so nobody will be
suspicious of him. He and the dealer are in cahoots ... isn't that the
word?"
"Yes, Your Majesty," Boyd said. "That's the word." His tone was awed and
respectful, and the little old lady gave a nod and became Queen
Elizabeth I once more.
"Well," she said, "the dealer and Mr. Elliott were in cahoots, and the
dealer wanted to give the hand to Mr. Elliott. But he made a mistake,
and dealt the Jack of clubs to me. I watched him, and, of course, I knew
what he was thinking. The rest was easy."
"My God," Malone said. "Easy."
Barbara said: "Did she win?"
"She won," Malone said with what he felt was positively magnificent
understatement.
"Good," Barbara said, and lost interest at once.
* * * * *
Malone had seen the lights of a car in the rear-view mirror a few
minutes before. When he looked now, the lights were still there--but the
fact just didn't register until, a couple of blocks later, the car began
to pull around them on the left. It was a Buick, while Boyd's was a new
Lincoln, but the edge wasn't too apparent yet.
Malone spotted the gun barrel protruding from the Buick and yelled just
before the first shot went off.
Boyd, at the wheel, didn't even bother to look. His reflexes took over
and he slammed his foot down on the brake. The specially-built FBI
Lincoln slowed down instantly. The shotgun blast splattered the glass of
the curved windshield all over--but none of it came into the car itself.
Malone already had his hand on the butt of the .44 Magnum under his left
armpit, and he even had time to be grateful, for once, that it wasn't a
smallsword. The women were in the back seat, frozen, and he yelled:
"Duck!" and felt, rather than saw, both of them sink down onto the floor
of the car.
The Buick had slowed down, too, and the gun barrel was swiveling back
for a second shot. Malone felt naked and unprotected. The Buick and the
Lincoln were even on the road now.
Malone had his revolver out. He fired the first shot without even
realizing fully that he'd done so, and he heard a piercing scream from
Barbara in the back seat. He had no time to look back.
A .44 Magnum is not, by any means, a small gun. As hand guns
go--revolvers and automatics--it is about as large as a gun can get to
be. An ordinary car has absolutely no chance against it.
Much less the glass in an ordinary car.
The first slug drilled its way through the window glass as though it
were not there, and slammed its way through an even more unprotected
obstacle, the frontal bones of the triggerman's skull. The second slug
from Malone's gun missed the hole the first slug had made by something
less than an inch.
The big, apelike thug who was holding the shotgun had a chance to pull
the trigger once more, but he wasn't aiming very well. The blast merely
scored the paint off the top of the Lincoln.
The rear window of the Buick was open, and Malone caught sight of
another glint of blued steel from the corner of his eye. There was no
time to shift aim--not with bullets flying like swallows on the way to
Capistrano. Malone thought faster than he had ever imagined himself
capable of doing, and decided to aim for the driver.
Evidently the man in the rear seat of the Buick had had the same
inspiration. Malone blasted two more high-velocity lead slugs at the
driver of the big Buick, and at the same time the man in the Buick's
rear seat fired at Boyd.
But Boyd had shifted tactics. He'd hit the brakes. Now he came down hard
on the accelerator instead.
* * * * *
The chorus of shrieks from the Lincoln's back seat increased slightly in
volume. Barbara, Malone knew, wasn't badly hurt; she hadn't even stopped
for breath since the first shot had been fired. Anybody who could scream
like that, he told himself, had to be healthy.
As the Lincoln leaped ahead, Malone pulled the trigger of his .44 twice
more. The heavy, high-speed chunks of streamlined copper-coated lead
leaped from the muzzle of the gun and slammed into the driver of the
Buick without wasting any time. The Buick slewed across the highway.
The two shots fired by the man in the back seat went past Malone's head
with a _whizz_, missing both him and Boyd by a margin too narrow to
think about.
But those were the last shots. The only difference between the FBI and
the Enemy seemed to be determination and practice.
The Buick spun into a flat sideskid, swiveled on its wheels and slammed
into the ditch at the side of the road, turning over and over, making a
horrible noise, as it broke up.
Boyd slowed the car again, just as there was a sudden blast of fire. The
Buick had burst into flame and was spitting heat and smoke and fire in
all directions. Malone sent one more bullet after it in a last flurry of
action--saving his last one for possible later emergencies.
Boyd jammed on the brakes and the Lincoln came to a screaming halt. In
silence he and Malone watched the burning Buick roll over and over into
the desert beyond the shoulder.
"My God," Boyd said. "My ears!"
Malone understood at once. The blast from his own still-smoking .44 had
roared past Boyd's head during the gun battle. No wonder the man's ears
hurt. It was a wonder he wasn't altogether deaf.
But Boyd shook off the pain and brought out his own .44 as he stepped
out of the car. Malone followed him, his gun trained.
From the rear, Her Majesty said: "It's safe to rise now, isn't it?"
"You ought to know," Malone said. "You can tell if they're still alive."
There was silence while Queen Elizabeth frowned for a moment in
concentration. A look of pain crossed her face, and then, as her
expression smoothed again, she said: "The traitors are dead. All except
one, and he's--" She paused. "He's dying," she finished. "He can't hurt
you."
There was no need for further battle. Malone reholstered his .44 and
turned to Boyd. "Tom, call the State Police," he said. "Get 'em down
here fast."
He waited while Boyd climbed back under the wheel and began punching
buttons on the dashboard. Then Malone went toward the burning Buick.
He tried to drag the men out, but it wasn't any use. The first two, in
the front seat, had the kind of holes in them people talked about
throwing elephants through. Head and chest had been hit.
Malone couldn't get close enough to the fiercely blazing automobile to
make even a try for the men in the back seat.
* * * * *
He was sitting quietly on the edge of the rear seat when the Nevada
Highway Patrol cars drove up next to them. Barbara Wilson had stopped
screaming, but she was still sobbing on Malone's shoulder. "It's all
right," he told her, feeling ineffectual.
"I never saw anybody killed before," she said.
"It's all right," Malone said. "Nothing's going to hurt you. I'll
protect you."
He wondered if he meant it, and found, to his surprise, that he did.
Barbara Wilson sniffled and looked up at him. "Mr. Malone--"
"Ken," he said.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Ken--I'm so afraid. I saw the hole in one of the
men's heads, when you fired ... it was--"
"Don't think about it," Malone said. To him, the job had been an
unpleasant occurrence, but a job, that was all. He could see, though,
how it might affect people who were new to it.
"You're so brave," she said.
Malone tightened his arm around the girl's shoulder. "Just depend on
me," he said. "You'll be all right if you--"
The State Trooper walked up then, and looked at them. "Mr. Malone?" he
said. He seemed to be taken slightly aback at the costuming.
"That's right," Malone said. He pulled out his ID card and the little
golden badge. The State Patrolman looked at them, and looked back at
Malone.
"What's with the getup?" he said.
"FBI," Malone said, hoping his voice carried conviction. "Official
business."
"In costume?"
"Never mind about the details," Malone snapped.
"He's an FBI agent, sir," Barbara said.
"And what are you?" the Patrolman said. "Lady Jane Grey?"
"I'm a nurse," Barbara said. "A psychiatric nurse."
"For nuts?"
"For disturbed patients."
The patrolman thought that over. "You've got the identity cards and
stuff," he said at last. "Maybe you've got a reason to dress up. How
would I know? I'm only a State Patrolman."
"Let's cut the monologue," Malone said savagely, "and get to business."
The patrolman stared. Then he said: "All right, sir. Yes, sir. I'm
Lieutenant Adams, Mr. Malone. Suppose you tell me what happened?"
Carefully and concisely, Malone told him the story of the Buick that had
pulled up beside them, and what had happened afterward.
Meanwhile, the other cops had been looking over the wreck. When Malone
had finished his story, Lieutenant Adams flipped his notebook shut and
looked over toward them. "I guess it's O.K., sir," he said. "As far as
I'm concerned, it's justifiable homicide. Self-defense. Any reason why
they'd want to kill you?"
Malone thought about the Golden Palace. That might be a reason--but it
might not. And why burden an innocent State Patrolman with the facts of
FBI life?
"Official," he said. "Your chief will get the report."
The patrolman nodded. "I'll have to take a deposition tomorrow, but--"
"I know," Malone said. "Thanks. Can we go on to our hotel now?"
"I guess," the patrolman said. "Go ahead. We'll take care of the rest of
this. You'll be getting a call later."
"Fine," Malone said. "Trace those hoods, and any connections they might
have had. Get the information to me as soon as possible."
Lieutenant Adams nodded. "You won't have to leave the state, will you?"
he asked. "I don't mean that you _can't_, exactly ... hell, you're FBI.
But it'd be easier--"
"Call Burris in Washington," Malone said. "He can get hold of me--and if
the Governor wants to know where we are, or the State's Attorney, put
them in touch with Burris, too. O.K.?"
"O.K.," Lieutenant Adams said. "Sure." He blinked at Malone. "Listen,"
he said. "About those costumes--"
"We're trying to catch Henry VIII for the murder of Anne Boleyn," Malone
said with a polite smile. "O.K.?"
"I was only asking," Lieutenant Adams said. "Can't blame a man for
asking, now, can you?"
Malone climbed into his front seat. "Call me later," he said. The car
started. "Back to the hotel, Sir Thomas," Malone said, and the car
roared off.
VII
Yucca Flats, Malone thought, certainly deserved its name. It was about
as flat as land could get, and it contained millions upon millions of
useless yuccas. Perhaps they were good for something, Malone thought,
but they weren't good for _him_.
The place might, of course, have been called Cactus Flats, but the cacti
were neither as big nor as impressive as the yuccas.
[Illustration: "I knight thee Sir Andrew...."]
Or was that yucci?
Possibly, Malone mused, it was simply yucks.
And whatever it was, there were millions of it. Malone felt he couldn't
stand the sight of another yucca. He was grateful for only one thing.
It wasn't summer. If the Elizabethans had been forced to drive in closed
cars through the Nevada desert in the summertime, they might have
started a cult of nudity, Malone felt. It was bad enough now, in what
was supposed to be winter.
The sun was certainly bright enough, for one thing. It glared through
the cloudless sky and glanced with blinding force off the road. Sir
Thomas Boyd squinted at it through the rather incongruous sunglasses he
was wearing, while Malone wondered idly if it was the sunglasses, or the
rest of the world, that was an anachronism. But Sir Thomas kept his eyes
grimly on the road as he gunned the powerful Lincoln toward the Yucca
Flats Labs at eighty miles an hour.
Malone twisted himself around and faced the women in the back seat. Past
them, through the rear window of the Lincoln, he could see the second
car. It followed them gamely, carrying the newest addition to Sir
Kenneth Malone's Collection of Bats.
"Bats?" Her Majesty said suddenly, but gently. "Shame on you, Sir
Kenneth. These are poor, sick people. We must do our best to help
them--not to think up silly names for them. For shame!"
"I suppose so," Malone said wearily. He sighed and, for the fifth time
that day, he asked: "Does Your Majesty have any idea where our spy is
now?"
"Well, really, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said with the slightest of
hesitations, "it isn't easy, you know. Telepathy has certain laws, just
like everything else. After all, even a game has laws. Being telepathic
did not help me to play poker--I still had to learn the rules. And
telepathy has rules, too. A telepath can easily confuse another telepath
by using some of those rules."
"Oh, fine," Malone said. "Well, have you got into contact with his mind
yet?"
"Oh, yes," Her Majesty said happily. "And my goodness, he's certainly
digging up a lot of information, isn't he?"
Malone moaned softly. "But who _is_ he?" he asked after a second.
The Queen stared at the roof of the car in what looked like
concentration. "He hasn't thought of his name yet," she said. "I mean,
at least if he has, he hasn't mentioned it to me. Really, Sir Kenneth,
you have no idea how difficult all this is."
Malone swallowed with difficulty. "_Where_ is he, then?" he said. "Can
you tell me that, at least? His location?"
Her Majesty looked positively desolated with sadness. "I can't be sure,"
she said. "I really can't be exactly sure just where he is. He does keep
moving around, I know that. But you have to remember that he doesn't
want me to find him. He certainly doesn't want to be found by the FBI
... would you?"
"Your Majesty," Malone said, "I _am_ the FBI."
"Yes," the Queen said, "but suppose you weren't? He's doing his best to
hide himself, even from me. It's sort of a game he's playing."
"A game!"
Her Majesty looked contrite. "Believe me, Sir Kenneth, the minute I
know exactly where he is, I'll tell you. I promise. Cross my heart and
hope to die--which I can't, of course, being immortal." Nevertheless,
she made an X-mark over her left breast. "All right?"
"All right," Malone said, out of sheer necessity. "O.K. But don't waste
any time telling me. Do it right away. We've _got_ to find that spy and
isolate him somehow."
"Please don't worry yourself, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "Your
Queen is doing everything she can."
"I know that, Your Majesty," Malone said. "I'm sure of it." Privately,
he wondered just how much even she could do. Then he realized--for
perhaps the ten-thousandth time--that there was no such thing as
wondering privately any more.
"That's quite right, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said sweetly. "And it's
about time you got used to it."
"What's going on?" Boyd said. "More reading minds back there?"
"That's right, Sir Thomas," the Queen said.
"I've about gotten used to it," Boyd said almost cheerfully. "Pretty
soon they'll come and take me away, but I don't mind at all." He whipped
the car around a bend in the road savagely. "Pretty soon they'll put me
with the other sane people and let the bats inherit the world. But I
don't mind at all."
"Sir Thomas!" Her Majesty said in shocked tones.
"Please," Boyd said with a deceptive calmness. "Just Mr. Boyd. Not even
Lieutenant Boyd, or Sergeant Boyd. Just Mr. Boyd. Or, if you prefer,
Tom."
"Sir Thomas," Her Majesty said, "I really can't understand this
sudden--"
"Then don't understand it," Boyd said. "All I know is everybody's nuts,
and I'm sick and tired of it."
A pall of silence fell over the company.
"Look, Tom," Malone began at last.
"Don't you try smoothing me down," Boyd snapped.
Malone's eyebrows rose. "O.K.," he said. "I won't smooth you down. I'll
just tell you to shut up, to keep driving--and to show some respect to
Her Majesty."
"I--" Boyd stopped. There was a second of silence.
"_That's_ better," Her Majesty said with satisfaction.
Lady Barbara stretched in the back seat, next to Her Majesty. "This is
certainly a long drive," she said. "Have we got much farther to go?"
"Not too far," Malone said. "We ought to be there soon."
"I ... I'm sorry for the way I acted," Barbara said.
"What do you mean, the way you acted?"
"Crying like that," Barbara said with some hesitation. "Making
an--absolute idiot of myself. When that other car--tried to get us."
"Don't worry about it," Malone said. "It was nothing."
"I just--made trouble for you," Barbara said.
Her Majesty touched the girl on the shoulder. "He's not thinking about
the trouble you cause him," she said quietly.
"Of course I'm not," Malone told her.
"But I--"
"My dear girl," Her Majesty said, "I believe that Sir Kenneth is, at
least partly, in love with you."
Malone blinked. It was perfectly true--even if he hadn't quite known it
himself until now. Telepaths, he was discovering, were occasionally
handy things to have around.
"In ... love--" Barbara said.
"And you, my dear--" Her Majesty began.
"Please, Your Majesty," Lady Barbara said. "No more. Not just now."
The Queen smiled, almost to herself. "Certainly, dear," she said.
* * * * *
The car sped on. In the distance, Malone could see the blot on the
desert that indicated the broad expanse of Yucca Flats Labs. Just the
fact that it could be seen, he knew, didn't mean an awful lot. Malone
had been able to see it for the past fifteen minutes, and it didn't look
as if they'd gained an inch on it. Desert distances are deceptive.
At long last, however, the main gate of the laboratories hove into view.
Boyd made a left turn off the highway and drove a full seven miles along
the restricted road, right up to the big gate that marked the entrance
of the laboratories themselves. Once again, they were faced with the
army of suspicious guards and security officers.
This time, suspicion was somewhat heightened by the dress of the
visitors. Malone had to explain about six times that the costumes were
part of an FBI arrangement, that he had not stolen his identity cards,
that Boyd's cards were Boyd's, too, and in general that the four of them
were not insane, not spies, and not jokesters out for a lark in the
sunshine.
Malone had expected all of that. He went through the rigmarole wearily
but without any sense of surprise. The one thing he hadn't been
expecting was the man who was waiting for him on the other side of the
gate.
When he'd finished identifying everybody for the fifth or sixth time, he
began to climb back into the car. A familiar voice stopped him cold.
"Just a minute, Malone," Andrew J. Burris said. He erupted from the
guardhouse like an avenging angel, followed closely by a thin man, about
five feet ten inches in height, with brush-cut brown hair, round
horn-rimmed spectacles, large hands and a small Sir Francis Drake beard.
Malone looked at the two figures blankly.
"Something wrong, chief?" he said.
Burris came toward the car. The thin gentleman followed him, walking
with an odd bouncing step that must have been acquired, Malone thought,
over years of treading on rubber eggs. "I don't know," Burris said when
he'd reached the door. "When I was in Washington, I seemed to know--but
when I get out here in this desert, everything just goes haywire." He
rubbed at his forehead.
Then he looked into the car. "Hello, Boyd," he said pleasantly.
"Hello, chief," Boyd said.
Burris blinked. "Boyd, you look like Henry VIII," he said with only the
faintest trace of surprise.
"Doesn't he, though?" Her Majesty said from the rear seat. "I've noticed
that resemblance myself."
Burris gave her a tiny smile. "Oh," he said. "Hello, Your Majesty.
I'm--"
"Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI," the Queen finished for him.
"Yes, I know. It's very nice to meet you at last. I've seen you on
television, and over the video phone. You photograph badly, you know."
"I do?" Burris said pleasantly. It was obvious that he was keeping
himself under very tight control.
Malone felt remotely sorry for the man--but only remotely. Burris might
as well know, he thought, what they had all been going through the past
several days.
Her Majesty was saying something about the honorable estate of
knighthood, and the Queen's List. Malone began paying attention when she
came to: "... And I hereby dub thee--" She stopped suddenly, turned and
said: "Sir Kenneth, give me your weapon."
Malone hesitated for a long, long second. But Burris' eye was on him,
and he could interpret the look without much trouble. There was only one
thing for him to do. He pulled out his .44, ejected the remaining
cartridge in his palm--and reminded himself to reload the gun as soon as
he got it back--and handed the weapon to the Queen, butt foremost.
She took the butt of the revolver in her right hand, leaned out the
window of the car, and said in a fine, distinct voice: "Kneel, Andrew."
Malone watched with wide, astonished eyes as Andrew J. Burris, Director
of the FBI, went to one knee in a low and solemn genuflection. Queen
Elizabeth Thompson nodded her satisfaction.
She tapped Burris gently on each shoulder with the muzzle of the gun. "I
knight thee Sir Andrew," she said. She cleared her throat. "My, this
desert air is dry--Rise, Sir Andrew, and know that you are henceforth
Knight Commander of the Queen's Own FBI."
"Thank you, Your Majesty," Burris said humbly.
He rose to his feet silently. The Queen withdrew into the car again and
handed the gun back to Malone. He thumbed cartridges into the chambers
of the cylinder and listened dumbly.
"Your Majesty," Burris said, "this is Dr. Harry Gamble, the head of
Project Isle. Dr. Gamble, this is Her Majesty the Queen; Lady Barbara
Wilson, her ... uh ... her lady in waiting; Sir Kenneth Malone; and King
... I mean Sir Thomas Boyd." He gave the four a single bright impartial
smile. Then he tore his eyes away from the others, and bent his gaze on
Sir Kenneth Malone. "Come over here a minute, Malone," he said, jerking
his thumb over his shoulder. "I want to talk to you."
* * * * *
Malone climbed out of the car and went around to meet Burris. He felt
just a little worried as he followed the Director away from the car.
True, he had sent Burris a long telegram the night before, in code. But
he hadn't expected the man to show up at Yucca Flats. There didn't seem
to be any reason for it.
And when there isn't any reason, Malone told himself sagely, it's a bad
one.
"What's the trouble, chief?" he asked.
Burris sighed. "None so far," he said quietly. "I got a report from the
Nevada State Patrol, and ran it through R&I. They identified the men you
killed, all right--but it didn't do us any good. They're hired hoods."
"Who hired them?" Malone said.
Burris shrugged. "Somebody with money," he said. "Hell, men like that
would kill their own grandmothers if the price were right--you know
that. We can't trace them back any farther."
Malone nodded. That was, he had to admit, bad news. But then, when had
he last had any good news?
"We're nowhere near our telepathic spy," Burris said. "We haven't come
any closer than we were when we started. Have you got anything? Anything
at all, no matter how small?"
"Not that I know of, sir," Malone said.
"What about the little old lady ... what's her name? Thompson. Anything
from her?"
Malone hesitated. "She has a close fix on the spy, sir," he said slowly,
"but she doesn't seem able to identify him right away."
"What else does she want?" Burris said. "We've made her Queen and given
her a full retinue in costume; we've let her play roulette and poker
with Government money. Does she want to hold a mass execution? If she
does, I can supply some congressmen, Malone. I'm sure it could be
arranged." He looked at the agent narrowly. "I might even be able to
supply an FBI man or two," he added.
Malone swallowed hard. "I'm trying the best I can, sir," he said. "What
about the others?"
Burris looked even unhappier than usual. "Come along," he said. "I'll
show you."
When they got back to the car, Dr. Gamble was talking spiritedly with
Her Majesty about Roger Bacon. "Before my time, of course," the Queen
was saying, "but I'm sure he was a most interesting man. Now when dear
old Marlowe wrote his 'Faust,' he and I had several long discussions
about such matters. Alchemy--"
Burris interrupted with: "I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but we must
get on. Perhaps you'll be able to continue your ... ah ... audience
later." He turned to Boyd. "Sir Thomas," he said with an effort, "drive
directly to the Westinghouse buildings. Over that way." He pointed. "Dr.
Gamble will ride with you, and the rest of us will follow in the second
car. Let's move."
He stepped back as the project head got into the car, and watched it
roar off. Then he and Malone went to the second car, another FBI
Lincoln. Two agents were sitting in the back seat, with a still figure
between them.
With a shock, Malone recognized William Logan and the agents he'd
detailed to watch the telepath. Logan's face did not seem to have
changed expression since Malone had seen it last, and he wondered wildly
if perhaps it had to be dusted once a week.
He got in behind the wheel and Burris slid in next to him.
"Westinghouse." Burris said. "And let's get there in a hurry."
"Right," Malone said, and started the car.
"We just haven't had a single lead," Burris said. "I was hoping you'd
come up with something. Your telegram detailed the fight, of course, and
the rest of what's been happening--but I hoped there'd be something
more."
"There isn't," Malone was forced to admit. "All we can do is try to
persuade Her Majesty to tell us--"
"Oh, I know it isn't easy," Burris said. "But it seems to me--"
By the time they'd arrived at the administrative offices of
Westinghouse's psionics research area, Malone found himself wishing that
something would happen. Possibly, he thought, lightning might strike, or
an earthquake swallow everything up. He was, suddenly, profoundly tired
of the entire affair.
VIII
Four days later, he was more than tired. He was exhausted. The six
psychopaths--including Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I--had been housed in
a converted dormitory in the Westinghouse area, together with four
highly nervous and even more highly trained and investigated
psychiatrists from St. Elizabeths in Washington. The Convention of Nuts,
as Malone called it privately, was in full swing. And it was every bit
as strange as he'd thought it was going to be. Unfortunately, five of
the six--Her Majesty being the only exception--were completely out of
contact with the world. The psychiatrists referred to them in worried
tones as "unavailable for therapy," and spent most of their time
brooding over possible ways of bringing them back into the real world
for a while.
Malone stayed away from the five who were completely psychotic. The
weird babblings of fifty-year-old Barry Miles disconcerted him. They
sounded like little Charlie O'Neill's strange semi-connected jabber, but
Westinghouse's Dr. O'Connor said that it seemed to represent another
phenomenon entirely. William Logan's blank face was a memory of horror,
but the constant tinkling giggles of Ardith Parker, the studied and
concentrated way that Gordon Macklin wove meaningless patterns in the
air with his waving fingers, and the rhythmless, melodyless humming that
seemed to be all there was to the personality of Robert Cassiday were
simply too much for Malone. Taken singly, each was frightening and
remote; all together, they wove a picture of insanity that chilled him
more than he wanted to admit.
When the seventh telepath was flown in from Honolulu, Malone didn't even
bother to see her. He let the psychiatrists take over directly, and
simply avoided their sessions.
Queen Elizabeth I, on the other hand, he found genuinely likeable.
According to the psych boys, she had been--as both Malone and Her
Majesty had theorized--heavily frustrated by being the possessor of a
talent which no one else recognized. Beyond that, the impact of other
minds was disturbing; there was a slight loss of identity which seemed
to be a major factor in every case of telepathic insanity. But the Queen
had compensated for her frustrations in the easiest possible way; she
had simply traded her identity for another one, and had rationalized a
single, over-ruling delusion: that she was Queen Elizabeth I of England,
still alive and wrongfully deprived of her throne.
"It's a beautiful rationalization," one of the psychiatrists said with
more than a trace of admiration in his voice. "Complete and thoroughly
consistent. She's just traded identities--and everything else she
does--_everything_ else--stems logically out of her delusional premise.
Beautiful."
She might have been crazy, Malone realized. But she was a long way from
stupid.
The project was in full swing. The only trouble was that they were no
nearer finding the telepath than they had been three weeks before. With
five completely blank human beings to work with, and the sixth Queen
Elizabeth (Malone heard privately that the last telepath, the girl from
Honolulu, was no better than the first five; she had apparently
regressed into what one of the psychiatrists called a "non-identity
childhood syndrome." Malone didn't know what it meant, but it sounded
terrible.) Malone could see why progress was their most difficult
commodity.
Dr. Harry Gamble, the head of Project Isle, was losing poundage by the
hour with worry. And, Malone reflected, he could ill afford it.
Burris, Malone and Boyd had set themselves up in a temporary office
within the Westinghouse area. The director had left his assistant in
charge in Washington. Nothing, he said over and over again, was as
important as the spy in Project Isle.
Apparently Boyd had come to believe that, too. At any rate, though he
was still truculent, there were no more outbursts of rebellion.
* * * * *
But, on the fourth day:
"What do we do now?" Burris asked.
"Shoot ourselves," Boyd said promptly.
"Now, look here--" Malone began, but he was overruled.
"Boyd," Burris said levelly, "if I hear any more of that sort of
pessimism, you're going to be an exception to the beard rule. One more
crack out of you, and you can go out and buy yourself a razor."
Boyd put his hand over his chin protectively, and said nothing at all.
"Wait a minute," Malone said. "Aren't there any _sane_ telepaths in the
world?"
"We can't find any," Burris said. "We--"
There was a knock at the office door.
"Who's there?" Burris called.
"Dr. Gamble," said the man's surprisingly baritone voice.
Burris called: "Come in, doctor," and the door opened. Dr. Gamble's lean
face looked almost haggard.
"Mr. Burris," he said, extending his arms a trifle, "can't anything be
done?" Malone had seen Gamble speaking before, and had wondered if it
would be possible for the man to talk with his hands tied behind his
back. Apparently it wouldn't be. "We feel that we are approaching a
critical stage in Project Isle," the scientist said, enclosing one fist
within the other hand. "If anything more gets out to the Soviets, we
might as well publish our findings"--a wide, outflung gesture of both
arms--"in the newspapers."
Burris stepped back. "We're doing the best we can, Dr. Gamble," he said.
All things considered, his obvious try at radiating confidence was
nearly successful. "After all," he went on, "we know a great deal more
than we did four days ago. Miss Thompson has assured us that the spy is
right here, within the compound of Yucca Flats Labs. We've bottled
everything up in this compound, and I'm confident that no information is
at present getting through to the Soviet Government. Miss Thompson
agrees with me."
"Miss Thompson?" Gamble said, one hand at his bearded chin.
"The Queen," Burris said.
Gamble nodded and two fingers touched his forehead. "Ah," he said. "Of
course." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "But we can't keep everybody
who's here now locked up forever. Sooner or later we'll have to let
them"--his left hand described the gesture of a man tossing away a wad
of paper--"go." His hands fell to his sides. "We're lost, unless we can
find that spy."
"We'll find him," Burris said with a show of great confidence.
"But--"
"Give her time," Burris said. "Give her time. Remember her mental
condition."
Boyd looked up. "Rome," he said in an absent fashion, "wasn't built in a
daze."
Burris glared at him, but said nothing. Malone filled the conversational
hole with what he thought would be nice, and hopeful, and untrue.
"We know he's someone on the reservation, so we'll catch him
eventually," he said. "And as long as his information isn't getting into
Soviet hands, we're safe." He glanced at his wrist watch.
Dr. Gamble said: "But--"
"My, my," Malone said. "Almost lunchtime. I have to go over and have
lunch with Her Majesty. Maybe she's dug up something more."
"I hope so," Dr. Gamble said, apparently successfully deflected. "I do
hope so."
[Illustration: "One more crack out of you...."]
"Well," Malone said, "pardon me." He shucked off his coat and trousers.
Then he proceeded to put on the doublet and hose that hung in the little
office closet. He shrugged into the fur-trimmed, slash-sleeved coat,
adjusted the plumed hat to his satisfaction with great care, and gave
Burris and the others a small bow. "I go to an audience with Her
Majesty, gentlemen," he said in a grave, well-modulated voice. "I shall
return anon."
He went out the door and closed it carefully behind him. When he had
gone a few steps he allowed himself the luxury of a deep sigh.
* * * * *
Then he went outside and across the dusty street to the barracks where
Her Majesty and the other telepaths were housed. No one paid any
attention to him, and he rather missed the stares he'd become used to
drawing. But by now, everyone was used to seeing Elizabethan clothing.
Her Majesty had arrived at a new plateau.
She would now allow no one to have audience with her unless he was
properly dressed. Even the psychiatrists--whom she had, with a careful
sense of meiosis, appointed Physicians to the Royal House--had to wear
the stuff.
Malone went over the whole case in his mind--for about the thousandth
time, he told himself bitterly.
Who could the telepathic spy be? It was like looking for a needle in a
rolling stone, he thought. Or something. He did remember clearly that a
stitch in time saved nine, but he didn't know nine what, and suspected
it had nothing to do with his present problem.
How about Dr. Harry Gamble, Malone thought. It seemed a little unlikely
that the head of Project Isle would be spying on his own
men--particularly since he already had all the information. But, on the
other hand, he was just as probable a spy as anybody else.
Malone moved onward. Dr. Thomas O'Connor, the Westinghouse psionics man,
was the next nominee. Before Malone had actually found Her Majesty, he
had had a suspicion that O'Connor had cooked the whole thing up to throw
the FBI off the trail and confuse everybody, and that he'd intended
merely to have the FBI chase ghosts while the real spy did his work
undetected.
But what if O'Connor were the spy himself--a telepath? What if he were
so confident of his ability to throw the Queen off the track that he had
allowed the FBI to find all the other telepaths? There was another
argument for that: he'd had to report the findings of his machine no
matter what it cost him; there were too many other men on his staff who
knew about it.
O'Connor was a perfectly plausible spy, too. But he didn't seem very
likely. The head of a Government project is likely to be a
much-investigated man. Could any tie-up with Russia--even a psionic
one--stand against that kind of investigation? Malone doubted it.
Malone thought of the psychiatrists. There wasn't any evidence, that was
the trouble. There wasn't any evidence either way.
Then he wondered if Boyd had been thinking of him, Malone, as the
possible spy. Certainly it worked in reverse. Boyd--
No. That was silly.
Malone told himself that he might as well consider Andrew J. Burris.
Ridiculous. Absolutely ridic--
Well, Queen Elizabeth had seemed pretty certain when she'd pointed him
out in Dr. Dowson's office. And even though she'd changed her mind, how
much faith could be placed in Her Majesty? After all, if she'd made a
mistake about Burris, she could just as easily have made a mistake about
the spy's being at Yucca Flats. In that case, Malone thought sadly, they
were right back where they'd started from.
Behind their own goal line.
One way or another, though, Her Majesty had made a mistake. She'd
pointed Burris out as the spy, and then she'd said she'd been wrong.
Either Burris was a spy or he wasn't. You couldn't have it both ways.
Why couldn't you? Malone thought suddenly. And then something Burris
himself had said came back to him, something that--
_I'll be damned_, he thought.
He came to a dead stop in the middle of the street. In one sudden flash
of insight, all the pieces of the case he'd been looking at for so long
fell together and formed one consistent picture. The pattern was
complete.
Malone blinked.
In that second, he knew exactly who the spy was.
A jeep honked raucously and swerved around him. The driver leaned out to
curse and remained to stare. Malone was already halfway back to the
offices.
On the way, he stopped in at another small office, this one inhabited by
the two FBI men from Las Vegas. He gave a series of quick orders, and
got the satisfaction, as he left, of seeing one of the FBI men grabbing
for a phone in a hurry. It was good to be _doing_ things again,
important things.
Burris, Boyd and Dr. Gamble were still talking as Malone entered.
"That," Burris said, "was one hell of a quick lunch. What's Her Majesty
doing now--running a diner?"
Malone ignored the bait. "Gentlemen," he said solemnly, "Her Majesty has
asked that all of us attend her in audience. She has information of the
utmost gravity to impart, and wishes an audience at once."
Burris looked startled. "Has she--" he began, and stopped, leaving his
mouth open and the rest of the sentence unfinished.
Malone nodded gravely. "I believe, gentlemen," he said, "that Her
Majesty is about to reveal the identity of the spy who has been
battening on Project Isle."
The silence didn't last three seconds.
"Let's go," Burris snapped. He and the others headed for the door.
"Gentlemen!" Malone sounded properly shocked and offended. "Your dress!"
"Oh, _no_," Boyd said. "Not now."
Burris simply said: "You're quite right. Get dressed, Boyd ... I mean,
of course, Sir Thomas."
While Burris, Boyd and Dr. Gamble were dressing, Malone put in a call to
Dr. O'Connor and told him to be at Her Majesty's court in ten
minutes--and in full panoply. O'Connor, not unnaturally, balked a little
at first. But Malone talked fast and sounded as urgent as he felt. At
last he got the psionicist's agreement.
Then he put in a second call to the psychiatrists from St. Elizabeths
and told them the same thing. More used to the strange demands of
neurotic and psychotic patients, they were readier to comply.
Everyone, Malone realized with satisfaction, was assembled. Even Burris
and the others were ready to go. Beaming, he led them out.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later, there were nine men in Elizabethan costume standing
outside the room which had been designated as the Queen's Court. Dr.
Gamble's costume did not quite fit him; his sleeve ruffs were halfway up
to his elbows and his doublet had an unfortunate tendency to creep. The
St. Elizabeths men, all four of them, looked just a little like
moth-eaten versions of old silent pictures. Malone looked them over with
a somewhat sardonic eye. Not only did he have the answer to the whole
problem that had been plaguing them, but _his_ costume was a stunning,
perfect fit.
"Now, I want you men to let me handle this," Malone said. "I know just
what I want to say, and I think I can get the information without too
much trouble."
One of the psychiatrists spoke up. "I trust you won't disturb the
patient, Mr. Malone," he said.
"Sir Kenneth," Malone snapped.
The psychiatrist looked both abashed and worried. "I'm sorry," he said
doubtfully.
Malone nodded. "That's all right," he said. "I'll try not to disturb Her
Majesty unduly."
The psychiatrists conferred. When they came out of the huddle one of
them--Malone was never able to tell them apart--said: "Very well, we'll
let you handle it. But we will be forced to interfere if we feel you're
... ah ... going too far."
Malone said: "That's fair enough, gentlemen. Let's go."
He opened the door.
It was a magnificent room. The whole place had been done over in plastic
and synthetic fibers to look like something out of the Sixteenth
Century. It was as garish, and as perfect, as a Hollywood movie
set--which wasn't surprising, since two stage designers had been hired
away from color-TV spectaculars to set it up. At the far end of the
room, past the rich hangings and the flaming chandeliers, was a great
throne, and on it Her Majesty was seated. Lady Barbara reclined on the
steps at her feet.
Malone saw the expression on Her Majesty's face. He wanted to talk to
Barbara--but there wasn't time. Later, there might be. Now, he collected
his mind and drove one thought at the Queen, one single powerful
thought:
_Read me! You know by this time that I have the truth--but read deeper!_
The expression on her face changed suddenly. She was smiling a sad,
gentle little smile. Lady Barbara, who had looked up at the approach of
Sir Kenneth and his entourage, relaxed again, but her eyes remained on
Malone. "You may approach, my lords," said the Queen.
Sir Kenneth led the procession, with Sir Thomas and Sir Andrew close
behind him. O'Connor and Gamble came next, and bringing up the rear were
the four psychiatrists. They strode slowly along the red carpet that
stretched from the door to the foot of the throne. They came to a halt a
few feet from the steps leading up to the throne, and bowed in unison.
"You may explain, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said.
"Your Majesty understands the conditions?" Malone asked.
"Perfectly," said the Queen. "Proceed."
Now the expression on Barbara's face changed, to wonder and a kind of
fright. Malone didn't look at her. Instead, he turned to Dr. O'Connor.
"Dr. O'Connor, what are your plans for the telepaths who have been
brought here?" He shot the question out quickly, and O'Connor was caught
off-balance.
"Well ... ah ... we would like their co-operation in further research
which we ... ah ... plan to do into the actual mechanisms of telepathy.
Provided, of course"--he coughed gently--"provided that they become ...
ah ... accessible. Miss ... I mean, of course, Her Majesty has ...
already been a great deal of help." He gave Malone an odd look. It
seemed to say: _what's coming next?_
Malone simply gave him a nod, and a "Thank you, doctor," and turned to
Burris. He could feel Barbara's eyes on him, but he went on with his
prepared questions. "Chief," he said, "what about you? After we nail our
spy, what happens ... to Her Majesty, I mean? You don't intend to stop
giving her the homage due her, do you?"
Burris stared, openmouthed. After a second he managed to say: "Why, no,
of course not, Sir Kenneth. That is"--and he glanced over at the
psychiatrists--"if the doctors think--"
There was another hurried consultation. The four psychiatrists came out
of it with a somewhat shaky statement to the effect that treatments
which had been proven to have some therapeutic value ought not to be
discontinued, although of course there was always the chance that--
"Thank you, gentlemen," Malone said smoothly. He could see that they
were nervous, and no wonder; he could imagine how difficult it was for a
psychiatrist to talk about a patient in her presence. But they'd already
realized that it didn't make any difference; their thoughts were an open
book, anyway.
Lady Barbara said: "Sir ... I mean Ken ... are you going to--"
"What's this all about?" Burris snapped.
"Just a minute, Sir Andrew," Malone said. "I'd like to ask one of the
doctors here--or all of them, for that matter--one more question." He
whirled and faced them. "I'm assuming that not one of these persons is
legally responsible for his or her actions. Is that correct?"
Another hurried huddle. The psych boys were beginning to remind Malone
of a semi-pro football team in rather unusual uniforms.
Finally one of them said: "You are correct. According to the latest
statutes, all of these persons are legally insane--including Her
Majesty." He paused and gulped. "I except the FBI, of course--and
ourselves." Another pause. "And Dr. O'Connor and Dr. Gamble."
"And," said Lady Barbara, "me." She smiled sweetly at them all.
"Ah," the psychiatrist said. "Certainly. Of course." He retired into his
group with some confusion.
Malone was looking straight at the throne. Her Majesty's countenance was
serene and unruffled.
Barbara said suddenly: "You don't mean ... but she--" and closed her
mouth. Malone shot her one quick look, and then turned to the Queen.
"Well, Your Majesty?" he said. "You have seen the thoughts of every man
here. How do they appear to you?"
Her voice contained both tension and relief. "They are all good men,
basically--and kind men," she said. "And they believe us. That's the
important thing, you know. Their belief in us-- Just as you did that
first day we met. We've needed belief for so long ... for so long--" Her
voice trailed off; it seemed to become lost in a constellation of
thoughts. Barbara had turned to look up at Her Majesty.
Malone took a step forward, but Burris interrupted him. "How about the
spy?" he said.
Then his eyes widened. Boyd, standing next to him, leaned suddenly
forward. "That's why you mentioned all that about legal immunity because
of insanity," he whispered. "Because--"
"No," Barbara said. "No. She couldn't ... she's not--"
They were all looking at Her Majesty, now. She returned them stare for
stare, her back stiff and straight and her white hair enhaloed in the
room's light. "Sir Kenneth," she said--and her voice was only the least
bit unsteady--"they all think _I'm_ the spy."
Barbara stood up. "Listen," she said. "I didn't like Her Majesty at
first ... well, she was a patient, and that was all, and when she
started putting on airs ... but since I've gotten to know her I do like
her. I like her because she's good and kind herself, and because ...
because she wouldn't be a spy. She couldn't be. No matter what any of
you think ... even you ... Sir Kenneth!"
There was a second of silence.
"Of course she's not," Malone said quietly. "She's no spy."
"Would I spy on my own subjects?" she said. "Use your reason!"
"You mean...." Burris began, and Boyd finished for him:
"... She isn't?"
"No," Malone snapped. "She isn't. Remember, you said it would take a
telepath to catch a telepath?"
"Well--" Burris began.
"Well, Her Majesty remembered it," Malone said. "And acted on it."
Barbara remained standing. She went to the Queen and put an arm around
the little old lady's shoulder. Her Majesty did not object. "I knew,"
she said. "You couldn't have been a spy."
"Listen, dear," the Queen said. "Your Kenneth has seen the truth of the
matter. Listen to him."
"Her Majesty not only caught the spy," Malone said, "but she turned the
spy right over to us."
He turned at once and went back down the long red carpet to the door. _I
really ought to get a sword_, he thought, and didn't see Her Majesty
smile. He opened the door with a great flourish and said quietly: "Bring
him in, boys."
* * * * *
The FBI men from Las Vegas marched in. Between them was their prisoner,
a boy with a vacuous face, clad in a strait jacket that seemed to make
no difference at all to him. His mind was--somewhere else. But his body
was trapped between the FBI agents: the body of William Logan.
"Impossible," one of the psychiatrists said.
Malone spun on his heel and led the way back to the throne. Logan and
his guards followed closely.
"Your Majesty," Malone said, "may I present the prisoner?"
"Perfectly correct, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said. "Poor Willie is your
spy. You won't be too hard on him, will you?"
"I don't think so. Your Majesty," Malone said. "After all--"
"Now wait a minute," Burris exploded. "How did _you_ know any of this?"
Malone bowed to Her Majesty, and winked at Barbara. He turned to Burris.
"Well," he said, "I had one piece of information none of the rest of you
had. When we were in the Desert Edge Sanitarium, Dr. Dowson called you
on the phone. Remember?"
"Sure I remember," Burris said. "So?"
"Well," Malone said, "Her Majesty said she knew just where the spy was.
I asked her where--"
"Why didn't you tell me?" Burris screamed. "You knew all this time and
you didn't tell me?"
"Hold on," Malone said. "I asked her where--and she said: 'He's right
there.' And she was pointing right at your image on the screen."
Burris opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He closed it and tried again.
At last he managed one word.
"Me?" he said.
"You," Malone said. "But that's what I realized later. She wasn't
pointing at you. She was pointing at Logan, who was in the next room."
Barbara whispered: "Is that right, Your Majesty?"
"Certainly, dear," the Queen said calmly. "Would I lie to Sir Kenneth?"
Malone was still talking. "The thing that set me off this noon was
something you said, Sir Andrew," he went on. "You said there weren't any
sane telepaths--remember?"
Burris, incapable of speech, merely nodded.
"But according to Her Majesty," Malone said, "we had every telepath in
the United States right here. She told me that--and I didn't even see
it!"
"Don't blame yourself, Sir Kenneth," the Queen put in. "I did do my best
to mislead you, you know."
"You sure did!" Malone said. "And later on, when we were driving here,
you said the spy was 'moving around.' That's right; he was in the car
behind us, going eighty miles an hour."
Barbara stared. Malone got a lot of satisfaction out of that stare. But
there was still more ground to cover.
"Then," he said, "you told us he was here at Yucca Flats--after we
brought him here! It had to be one of the other six telepaths."
The psychiatrist who'd muttered: "Impossible," was still muttering it.
Malone ignored him.
"And when I remembered her pointing at you," Malone told Burris, "and
remembered that she'd only said: 'He's right there,' I knew it had to be
Logan. You weren't there. You were only an image on a TV screen. Logan
was there--in the room behind the phone."
Burris had found his tongue. "All right," he said. "O.K. But what's all
this about misleading us--and why didn't she tell us right away,
anyhow?"
Malone turned to Her Majesty on the throne. "I think that the Queen had
better explain that--if she will."
* * * * *
Queen Elizabeth Thompson nodded very slowly. "I ... I only wanted you to
respect me," she said. "To treat me properly." Her voice sounded uneven,
and her eyes were glistening with unspilled tears. Lady Barbara
tightened her arm about the Queen's shoulders once more.
"It's all right," she said. "We do--respect you."
The Queen smiled up at her.
Malone waited. After a second Her Majesty continued.
"I was afraid that as soon as you found poor Willie you'd send me back
to the hospital," she said. "And Willie couldn't tell the Russian agents
any more once he'd been taken away. So I thought I'd just ... just let
things stay the way they were as long as I could. That's ... that's
all."
Malone nodded. After a second he said: "You see that we couldn't
possibly send you back now, don't you?"
"I--"
"You know all the State Secrets, Your Majesty," Malone said. "We would
rather that Dr. Harman in San Francisco didn't try to talk you out of
them. Or anyone else."
The Queen smiled tremulously. "I know too much, do I?" she said. Then
her grin faded. "Poor Dr. Harman," she said.
"Poor Dr. Harman?"
"You'll hear about him in a day or so," she said. "I ... peeked inside
his mind. He's very ill."
"Ill?" Lady Barbara asked.
"Oh, yes," the Queen said. The trace of a smile appeared on her face.
"He thinks that all the patients in the hospital can see inside his
mind."
"Oh, my," Lady Barbara said--and began to laugh. It was the nicest sound
Malone had ever heard.
"Forget Harman," Burris snapped. "What about this spy ring? How was
Logan getting his information out?"
"I've already taken care of that," Malone said. "I had Desert Edge
Sanitarium surrounded as soon as I knew what the score was." He looked
at one of the agents holding Logan.
"They ought to be in the Las Vegas jail within half an hour," the agent
said in confirmation.
"Dr. Dowson was in on it, wasn't he, Your Majesty?" Malone said.
"Certainly," the Queen said. Her eyes were suddenly very cold. "I hope
he tries to escape. I hope he tries it."
Malone knew just how she felt.
One of the psychiatrists spoke up suddenly. "I don't understand it," he
said. "Logan is completely catatonic. Even if he could read minds, how
could he tell Dowson what he'd read? It doesn't make sense."
"In the first place," the Queen said patiently, "Willie isn't catatonic.
He's just _busy_, that's all. He's only a boy, and ... well, he doesn't
much like being who he is. So he visits other people's minds, and that
way he becomes _them_ for a while. You see?"
"Vaguely," Malone said. "But how did Dowson get his information? I had
everything worked out but that."
"I know you did," the Queen said, "and I'm proud of you. I intend to
award you with the Order of the Bath for this day's work."
Unaccountably, Malone's chest swelled with pride.
"As for Dr. Dowson," the Queen said, "that traitor ... _hurt_ Willie. If
he's hurt enough, he'll come back." Her eyes weren't hard any more. "He
didn't want to be a spy, really," she said, "but he's just a boy, and it
must have sounded rather exciting. He knew that if he told Dowson
everything he'd found out, they'd let him go--go away again."
There was a long silence.
"Well," Malone said, "that about wraps it up. Any questions?"
He looked around at the men, but before any of them could speak up Her
Majesty rose.
"I'm sure there are questions," she said, "but I'm really very tired. My
lords, you are excused." She extended a hand. "Come, Lady Barbara," she
said. "I think I really may need that nap, now."
* * * * *
Malone put the cuff links in his shirt with great care. They were great
stones, and Malone thought that they gave his costume that necessary
Elizabethan flair.
Not that he was wearing the costume of the Queen's Court now. Instead,
he was dressed in a tailor-proud suit of dark blue, a white-on-white
shirt and no tie. He selected one of a gorgeous peacock pattern from his
closet rack.
Boyd yawned at him from the bed in the room they were sharing. "Stepping
out?" he said.
"I am," Malone said with restraint. He whipped the tie round his neck
and drew it under the collar.
"Anybody I know?"
"I am meeting Lady Barbara, if you wish to know," Malone said.
"Come down," Boyd said. "Relax. Anyhow, I've got a question for you.
There was one little thing Her Everlovin' Majesty didn't explain."
"Yes?" said Malone.
"Well, about those hoods who tried to gun us down," Boyd said. "Who
hired 'em? And why?"
"Dowson," Malone said. "He wanted to kill us off, and then kidnap Logan
from the hotel room. But we foiled his plan--by killing his hoods. By
the time he could work up something else, we were on our way to Yucca
Flats."
"Great," Boyd said. "And how did you find out this startling piece of
information? There haven't been any reports in from Las Vegas, have
there?"
"No," Malone said.
"O.K.," Boyd said. "I give up, Mastermind."
Malone wished Boyd would stop using that nickname. The fact was--as he,
and apparently nobody else, was willing to recognize--that he wasn't
anything like a really terrific FBI agent. Even Barbara thought he was
something special.
He wasn't, he knew.
He was just lucky.
"Her Majesty informed me," Malone said.
"Her--" Boyd stood with his mouth dropped open, like a fish waiting for
some bait. "You mean she knew?"
"Well," Malone said, "she did know the guys in the Buick weren't the
best in the business--and she knew all about the specially-built FBI
Lincoln. She got that from our minds." He knotted his tie with an air of
great aplomb, and went, slowly to the door. "And she knew we were a good
team. She got that from our minds, too."
"But," Boyd said. After a second he said: "But," again, and followed it
with: "Why didn't she tell us?"
Malone opened the door.
"Her Majesty wished to see the Queen's Own FBI in action," said Sir
Kenneth Malone.
THE END
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