Chapter VII: Part 7

“There could,” O’Connor said. “The mind which created the shield for itself would have to be of tremendous power and a really high order of control. A strong, sane mind might conceivably create such a block that even Miss Thompson, let us say, might believe that she was picking up a real mind, when she was only picking up surface thoughts, with the real thought hidden behind the telepathic block.”

“Fine,” Malone said. “Thanks. Thanks a lot, Dr. O’Connor.”

“I am always happy to put my extensive knowledge of science at your disposal, Mr. Malone,” O’Connor said.

Malone watched the image collapse without really seeing it. Instead, he was busily talking to himself, or rather to his other self.

“Well, now, Sir Kenneth,” he said. “Let’s pull all the facts together and see what happens.”

“Indeed, Mr. Malone,” said Sir Kenneth Malone, “it is time that we did. Proceed, Sirrah. I shall attend.”

* * * * *

“Let’s start from the beginning,” Malone said. “We know there’s confusion in all parts of the country, in all parts of the world, I guess. And we know that confusion is being caused by carefully timed accidents and errors. We also know that these errors appear to be accompanied by violent bursts of psionic static—violent energy. And we know, further, that on three specific occasions, these bursts of energy were immediately followed by a reversal of policy in the mind of the person on the receiving end.”

“You mean,” Sir Kenneth put in, “that they changed their minds.”

“Correct,” Malone said. “I refer, of course, to the firm of Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch, Spying Done Cheap.”

“Indeed,” Sir Kenneth said. “Then the operators of this force, whatever it may be, have some interest in allowing these spies to confess?”

“Maybe,” Malone said. “Let’s leave that for later. To get back to the beginning of all this: it seems to me to follow that the accidents and errors which have caused all the confusion through the United States and Russia are caused by somebody’s mind being changed at exactly the right moment. A man does something just a little differently than he decided to—or else he forgets to do it at all.”

“Correct,” Sir Kenneth said. “And you feel, Mr. Malone, that a telepathic command is the cause of this confusion?”

“A series of them,” Malone said. “But we also know, from Dr. O’Connor, that it takes a great deal of psychic energy to perform this particular trick—more than a person can normally afford to expend.”

“Marry, now,” Sir Kenneth exclaimed, “such a statement does not seem to have reason in it. Changing the mind of a man seems a small thing in comparison to teleportation, or psychokinesis, or levitation. And yet it takes more power than any of these?”

Malone thought for a second. “Sure it does,” he said. “I’d say it was a matter of resistance. Moving an inanimate object is pretty simple— comparatively, anyhow—because inert matter has no mental resistance.”

“And moving yourself?” Sir Kenneth said.

“There is some resistance there, probably,” Malone said. “But you’ll remember that part of the Fueyo training system for teleportation involved overcoming your own mental resistance to the idea.”

“True,” Sir Kenneth said. “Quite true. Then let us say that it requires enormous power to effect these changes. What is our next step, Mr. Malone?”

“Next, Sir Kenneth,” Malone said, “We have to do a little supposing. This project must be handled by a fairly large group, since no individual can work it. This large group has to be telepathic, and not only for the precise timing O’Connor specified.”

“There is another reason?” Sir Kenneth said.

“There is,” Malone said. “They’ve also got to know exactly when to make their victim change his mind. Right?”

“Absolutely,” said Sir Kenneth. “Now, Sirrah, where does all this leave us? We have had the orderly presentation of the case; where, Sirrah, is your summation?”

“Coming up,” Malone said. “We’ve got to look for a widespread organization of telepaths, with enough mental discipline to hold a mental shield that Her Majesty can’t crack, and can’t even recognize the existence of. We thought she’d found all the telepaths. She said so, and she obviously thought so. But she didn’t. These are strong, trained—and sane.”

“Aha,” said Sir Kenneth.

“Her Majesty,” Malone said, “found us only the crazy telepaths, the weak ones, the nuts.”

“Fine,” said Sir Kenneth. “And this, Mr. Malone, leaves us with only one question. Her Majesty—may God bless her—stated that she first spotted these flashes of telepathic static by listening in on our minds.”

“Our mind,” Malone said. “I hope.”

“Very well,” Sir Kenneth said. “This means that some force is being directed in this way, toward us. And how do we know that all the deduction, all the careful case-building we have done, hasn’t been influenced by this group? That might mean, of course, that we are miles, or even light-years, from the solution.”

Malone said: “Yeep.” The sound was echoed by Sir Kenneth, and the two halves of the coruscating mind of Kenneth J. Malone were once more one.

_Your Majesty_, the minds thought, _I’d like to talk to you._

Nothing happened. Evidently, Her Majesty was temporarily out of mental contact with him.

“Hell,” Malone said. “Not to mention od’s blood.” He flipped on the visiphone and dialed Yucca Flats.

The figure that appeared on the screen was that of a tall, solidly-built man with a red face and the uniform of a Beefeater. This Tower Warder had the British royal crest embroidered on his chest, and the letters: “E. R.”

“Good evening, Sir Kenneth,” he said politely.

Malone had sometimes wondered what it would be like to be on the Queen’s permanent, personal staff. Evidently, it soaked in so thoroughly that one began to stay in character all the time. The little old lady’s delusion was such a pleasant one that it was painlessly infectious.

“I’d like to speak to Her Majesty, Colonel Fairfax,” Malone said.

“Her Majesty,” Colonel Fairfax said with regret, “is asleep, sir. I understand that she has had rather a trying time, of late.”

“Then I must ask you to wake her,” Malone said. “I don’t want to disturb her any more than you do, Colonel, but this is important.”

“Her Majesty’s rest,” Colonel Fairfax said gently, “is also important, Sir Kenneth.”

“This is more important,” Malone said. “I know how you feel, but it’s necessary to wake her.”

The screen blanked out.

Malone sighed and began to sing softly to himself while he waited:

“The soldiers of the Queen are linked in friendly tether— And if she’s off her bean, we’ll all go nuts together....”

Her Majesty appeared at this point, dressed in a silken robe bearing her crest and initials (E. R., rather than R. T., of course), and wearing a silken Mother Hubbard cap on her head. “Oh, dear,” she said instantly. “Are you still worried about them?”

“The flashes?” Malone said. “That’s right. You tuned in on my mind right away, didn’t you?”

“As soon as I got your message,” she said. “I like your little song, at least, I think I do.”

Malone blushed faintly. “Sorry,” he said.

“Oh, don’t be, Sir Kenneth,” Her Majesty said. “After all, I do allow my subjects a good deal of liberty; it is theirs to make use of.” She smiled at him. “Actually, I should have told you, Sir Kenneth. But it seemed so natural that I—that I forgot it.”

_Oh, no_, Malone thought.

“I’m afraid so,” Her Majesty said. “When I told you about the interference, your mind quite automatically began to build what I think of as a—as a defense against it. A shield, so to speak.”

_Me?_ Malone thought.

“Most certainly,” Her Majesty said. “You know, Sir Kenneth, you have a very strong mind.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Malone said aloud. “Sometimes I don’t feel so bright.”

“I’m not talking about intelligence,” Her Majesty said. “The two properties are interconnected, of course, but they are not identical. After all ... well, never mind. But you have strength of will, Sir Kenneth, and strength of purpose. As a matter of fact, you have been building your strength in the last few days.”

“Really?” Malone said, surprised.

“It’s become more and more difficult,” Her Majesty said, “to see into the depths of your mind, during the past few days. The surface of your mind is as easy to read as ever, but it’s hard to see what’s going on in the depths.”

“I’m not doing it deliberately,” Malone said.

“In any case,” Her Majesty said, “this process has been going on ever since you knew that telepathy was possible, two years ago. But in the past forty-eight hours matters have accelerated tremendously.”

“That sounds good,” Malone said. “Does it mean these mind-changers I’ve been thinking about can’t get through to me?”

“What mind-changers?” the Queen said. “Oh. I see.” She paused. “Well, I can’t be positive about this, Sir Kenneth; it’s all so new, you know. All I can tell you is that there haven’t been any flashes of telepathic energy in your mind in the last forty-eight hours.”

“Well,” Malone said doubtfully, “that’s something. And I am sorry I had to wake you, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, that’s perfectly all right,” she said. “I know you’re working hard to restore order to the realm, and it is the duty of any Sovereign to give such aid as she can to her Royal subjects.”

Malone cleared his throat. “I trust,” he said, “Your Majesty will ever find me a faithful servant.”

Her Majesty smiled. “I’m sure I shall,” she said. “Good night, Sir Kenneth.”

“Good night,” he said, and flipped off. At once, the phone chimed again.

He flipped the switch on. “Malone here,” he said.

Boyd’s face appeared on the screen. “Ken,” he said fervently, “I am very glad you’re still in town.”

“Thanks,” Malone said politely. “But what about Mike Sand? Any information?”

“Plenty,” Boyd said. “I damn near didn’t believe it.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t believe it?” Malone said. “Isn’t the information any good?”

“It’s good, all right,” Boyd said. “It’s great. He practically talked his head off to me. Gave me all his books, including secret sets. And I’ve put him under arrest as a material witness—at his own request.”

“It sounds,” Malone said, “as if Mike Sand has had a sudden and surprising change of heart.”

“Doesn’t it, though,” Boyd said. “We can crack the ITU wide open now, and I mean really wide open.”

“Same pattern?” Malone said.

“Of course it is,” Boyd said. “What does it sound like? Same pattern.”

“Good,” Malone said. “Get on up here. I’ll talk to you later.”

He cut off in a hurry, leaned back in his chair and started to think. At first, he thought of a cigar. Boyd, he figured, couldn’t be back in the office for some time, and nobody else would come in. He locked the door, drew out the cigar-laden box he kept in his desk in New York, and lit up with great satisfaction.

When the cloud of smoke around his head was dense enough to cut with a knife, he went back to more serious subjects. He didn’t have to worry too much about his mind being spied on; if Her Majesty couldn’t read his deepest thoughts, and the mind-changers weren’t throwing any bolts of static in his direction, he was safe.

Now, then, he told himself—and sneezed.

He shook his head, cursed slightly, and went on.

Now, then....

There was an organization, spread all over the Western world, and with secret branches, evidently, in the Soviet Union. The organization had to be an old one, because it had to have trained telepaths of such a high degree of efficiency that they could evade Her Majesty’s probing without her even being aware of the evasion. And training took time.

There was something else to consider, too. In order to organize to such a degree that they could wreak the efficient, complete havoc they were wreaking, the organization couldn’t be completely secret; there are always leaks, always suspicious events, and a secret society that covered all of those up would have no time for anything else.

So the organization had to be a known one, a known group, masquerading as something else.

So far, everything made sense. Malone took another deep, grateful puff on the cigar, and frowned. Where, he wondered, did he go from here?

He reached for a pencil and a piece of paper. He headed the paper: _Organization._ Then he started putting down what he knew about it, and what he’d figured out.

1. Large
2. Old
3. Disguised

It sounded just a little like Frankenstein’s Monster, so far. But what else did he know about it?

After a second’s thought, he murmured: “Nothing,” and took another puff.

But that wasn’t quite true.

He knew one more thing about the organization. He knew they’d probably be immune to the confusion everybody else was suffering from. The organization would be—had to be—efficient. It would be composed of intelligent, superbly cooperative people, who could work together as a unit without in the least impairing their own individuality.

He reached for the list again, put down:

4. Efficient

And looked at it. Now it didn’t remind him quite so much of the Monster. But it didn’t look familiar, either. Who did he know, he thought, who was large, old, disguised and efficient?

It sounded like an improbable combination. He set the list down again, clearing off some of the papers the PRS had sent him to make room for it.

Then he stopped.

The papers the PRS had sent him....

And he’d gotten them so quickly, so efficiently....

They were a large organization....

And an old one....

He tossed the cigar in the general direction of the ashtray, grabbed the phone and jabbed at buttons.

The girl who answered the phone looked familiar. She did not look very old, but she was large and she had to be disguised, Malone thought. Nobody could naturally have that many teeth.

“Psychical Research Society,” she said. “Oh, Mr. Malone, good evening.”

“Sir Lewis,” Malone said. “Sir Lewis Carter. President. I want to talk to him. Hurry.”

“Sir Lewis?” the girl said slowly. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Malone, but the office is closed now for the day. And Sir Lewis has gone already. It’s after six o’clock, Mr. Malone, and the office is closed.”

“Home number,” Malone said desperately. “I’ve got to.”

“Well, I can do that, Mr. Malone,” she said, “but it wouldn’t do you any good, really. Because he went away on his vacation, and when he goes on his vacation he never tells us where. You know? He won’t be back for two or three weeks.”

“Oog,” Malone said, and thought for less than a second. “Miss Garbitsch,” he said. “Lou. Got to talk to her. Now.”

“Oh, I can’t do that, either, Mr. Malone,” the toothy girl said. “All of the executive officers, they left already on their vacation. And that includes Miss Garbitsch, too. They just left a skeleton force here at the office.”

“They’re all gone?” Malone said hollowly.

“That’s right,” she said cheerfully. “As a matter of fact, I’m in charge now, and that’s why I’m staying so late. To sort of catch up on things. You know?”

“It’s very important,” Malone said tensely. “You don’t know where any of them went? You don’t have any address?”

“None at all,” she said. “I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. Maybe it’s strange, and maybe you’d ask questions, but I obey orders, and those’re my orders. To take over until they get back. They didn’t tell me where they went, and I didn’t ask.”

“Great,” Malone said. He wanted to shoot himself.

Lou was one of them. Of course she was; that was obvious now, when he thought about it. Lou was one of the secret group that was sabotaging practically everything.

And now they’d all gone. For two weeks—or for good.

The girl’s voice broke in on his thoughts.

“Oh, Mr. Malone,” she said, “I’m sorry, but I just remembered. They left a note for you.”

“A note?” Malone said.

“Sir Lewis said you might call,” the girl said, “and he left a message. If you’ll hold on a minute I’ll read it to you.”

Malone waited tensely. The girl found a slip of paper, blinked at it and read:

“My dear Malone, I’m afraid you are perfectly correct in your deductions; and, as you can see, that leaves us no alternative. Sorry. Miss G. sends her apologies to you, as do I.” The girl looked up. “It’s signed by Sir Lewis,” she said. “Does that mean anything to you, Mr. Malone?”

“I’m afraid it does,” Malone said bleakly. “It means entirely too much.”

12

After the great mass of teeth, vaguely surrounded by a face, had faded from Malone’s screen, he just sat there, looking at the dead, grey screen of the visiphone and feeling about twice as dead and at least three times as grey.

Things, he told himself, were terrible. But even that sentence, which was a good deal more cheerful than what he actually felt, didn’t do anything to improve his mood. All of the evidence, after all, had been practically living on the tip of his nose for nearly twenty-four hours, and not only had he done nothing about it, but he hadn’t even seen it.

Two or three times, for instance, he’d doubted the possibility of teleporting another human being. All his logic had told him it wasn’t so. But, he’d thought, he and Her Majesty had teleported Lou, and so, obviously, his logic was wrong.

No, it wasn’t, he thought now. There _would_ be too much mental resistance, even if the person were unconscious. Teleportation of another human being _would_ be impossible.

Unless, of course, the other human being was able to teleport on her own.

True, she had been no more than semiconscious. She probably couldn’t have teleported on her own. But Malone and Her Majesty had, ever so kindly and ever so mistakenly, helped her, and Lou had managed to teleport to the plane.

And that wasn’t all, he thought dismally. That was far from all.

“Let’s take another for-instance,” he said savagely, in what he thought was a caricature of the Manelli voice. In order for all three to teleport, there had to be perfect synchronization.

Otherwise, they’d have arrived either at different places, or at the same place but at different times.

And perfect synchronization on a psionic level meant telepathy. At least two of the three had to be telepathic. Her Majesty was, of course. Malone wasn’t.

So Lou had to be telepathic, too.

Malone told himself bitterly to quit calling the girl Lou. After the way she’d deceived him, she didn’t deserve it. Her name was Luba Garbitsch, and from now on he was going to call her Luba Garbitsch. In his own mind, anyway.

Facts came tumbling in on him like the side of a mountain, falling on a hapless traveler during a landslide. And, Malone told himself, he had never had less help in all of his ill-starred life.

Her Majesty had never, never suspected that Luba Garbitsch was anything other than the girl she pretended to be. That was negative evidence, true, and taken alone it meant nothing at all. But when you added the other facts to it, it showed, with perfect plainness, that Luba Garbitsch was the fortunate possessor of a mind shield as tough, as strong and as perfect as any Malone, O’Connor or good old Cartier Taylor had ever even thought of dreaming up.

And then, very suddenly, another fact arrived, and pushed the rest out into the black night of Malone’s bitter mind. He punched hard on the intercom button and got the desk of the agent-in-charge.

“Now what’s wrong?” the A-in-C said. “Ghosts got loose? Or do you want some help with a beautiful blonde heiress?”

“What would I be doing,” Malone snapped, “with a beautiful blonde heiress?”

The agent-in-charge looked thoughtful. It was obvious that he had been saving his one joke up for several hours. “You might be holding her,” he suggested, “for ransom, of course.”

“That’s not funny,” Malone said. “Nothing is funny any more.”

“Oh, all right,” the A-in-C said. “You Washington boys are just too good for the rest of us. What’s on your mind?”

“You’ve got a twenty-four-hour watch on Luba Garbitsch, haven’t you?” Malone said.

“Sure we have,” the A-in-C said. “Boyd said—”

“Yes, I know what he said,” Malone cut in. “Give me a check on those men. I want to find out where she is right now. Right this minute.”

The agent-in-charge shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “It’s none of my business. Hang on a second.”

The screen went blank, but it didn’t go silent. Each of the agents, on a stakeout job like the Garbitsch one, would be carrying personal communicators, and Malone could hear the voice of the agent-in-charge as he spoke to them.

He couldn’t make out all the words, and it wasn’t important anyhow. He’d know soon enough, he kept telling himself; just as soon as the A-in-C came back and reported.

It seemed like about twelve years before he did.

“She’s all right,” he said. “Nothing to worry about; she’s probably working late at her office, that’s all. She hasn’t gone home yet.”

“Want to bet?” Malone snapped.

“Don’t tempt me,” the A-in-C said. “I wouldn’t take your money—it’s probably counterfeit, printed in Washington.”

“I’ll give you ten to one,” Malone said.

“Ten to one, I’ll take,” the A-in-C said rapidly. “Ten to one is like taking candy from a traffic cop. I’m no amateur, even if I am stuck away in dull little old New York—and I know the boys I’ve got on stakeout. I’ll check, and—”

“Let me know when you do,” Malone said. “I’ve got some long-distance calls to make.”

* * * * *

Forty-five minutes later, he had all the news he needed. Spot checks on PRS offices on the West Coast, where it wasn’t closing time yet, showed that all the executive officers had suddenly felt the need of extended vacations to parts unknown.

That, if not exactly cheering news, was still welcome; Malone had more backing for his theory.

An overseas call to New Scotland Yard in London took a little more time, and several arguments with bored overseas operators who, apparently, had nothing better to do than to confuse the customers. But Malone finally managed to get Assistant Commissioner C. E. Teal, who promised to check on Malone’s inquiry at once.

It seemed like years before he called back, and Malone leaped to the phone.

“Yes?” he said.

Teal, red-faced and apparently masticating a stick of gum, said: “I got C. I. D. Commander Gideon to follow up on that matter, Mr. Malone. It is rather late here, as you must realize—”

“Yes?” Malone said. “And they’ve all gone?”

“Why, no,” Teal said, surprised. “A spot check shows that most of the executives of the London branch of the Psychical Research Society are spending quiet evenings in their homes. Our Inspector Ottermole actually spoke to Dr. Carnacki, the head of the office here.”

“Oh,” Malone said.

“They haven’t skipped,” Teal went on. “Is this in connection with anything serious, Mr. Malone?”

“Not yet,” Malone said. “But I’ll let you know at once if there are any further developments. Thanks very much, Mr. Teal.”

“A pleasure, Mr. Malone,” Teal said. “A pleasure.” And then, still masticating, he switched off.

And that, Malone told himself, was definitely that. Of course the British PRS hadn’t gone underground; why should they? The British police weren’t on to them, as Scotland Yard showed. And, no matter what opinions Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I might hold in the matter, the FBI had absolutely no jurisdiction in the British Isles.

Malone buried his face in his hands, thought about a cigar and decided that even a cigar might make him feel worse. Where were they? What were they doing now? What did they plan to do?

Where had they gone?

“Out of the everywhere,” he said in a hollow, sepulchral voice, “into the here.”

But where was the here?

He tried to make up his mind whether or not that made sense. Superficially, it sounded like plain bad English, but he wasn’t sure of anything any more. Things were getting much too confused.

There was a knock at the door.

Malone, without any hope at all, called: “Come in,” and the door opened.

The agent-in-charge came in, and dropped a dollar on Malone’s desk.

“So you checked,” Malone said.

“I checked,” the A-in-C said sadly. “The boys went through the entire damned building. Not a sign of her. Not even a trace.”

“There wouldn’t be one,” Malone said, shoving the dollar back to waiting hands. “Take the money; I knew what would happen. It was a sucker bet.”

“Well, I feel like the sucker, all right,” the A-in-C said. “I don’t know how she did it.”

“I do,” Malone said quietly. “Teleportation.”

The A-in-C whistled. “Well,” he said, “it was a great secret as long as it was FBI property. But now, friend, all hell is going to bust loose.”

“It already has,” Malone said hollowly.

“Great,” the A-in-C said. “What now?”

“Now,” Malone said, “I am going to go back to Washington. Take care of poor little old New York for me.”

He closed his eyes, and vanished.

When he opened them, he was in his Washington apartment. He went over to the big couch and sat down, feeling that if he were going to curse he might as well be comfortable while he did it. But when the air was bright blue, some minutes later, he didn’t feel any better. Cursing was not the answer.

Nothing seemed to be.

What was his next move?

Where did he go from here?

The more he thought about it, the more his mind spun. He was, he realized, at an absolute, total, dead end.

Oh, there were things he could do. Malone knew that very well. He could make a lot of noise and go through a lot of waste motion—that was what it would amount to. He could have all the homes of all the missing PRS members checked. That would result, undoubtedly, in the discovery that the PRS members involved weren’t in their homes. He could have their files impounded, which would clutter everything with a great many more pieces of paper, and none of the pieces of paper would do any good to him. In general, he could have the entire FBI chasing all over hell and gone—and finding nothing whatever.

No, it would be a waste of time, he told himself. That much was certain.

And, though he probably had enough evidence to get the FBI in motion, he had nowhere near enough to carry the case into court, much less make a try at getting the case to stand up in court. That was one thing he couldn’t do, even if he wanted to: issue warrants for arrest on any basis whatever.

But Malone was an FBI agent, and his motto was: “There’s always a way.” No normal method of tracking down the PRS members, and finding their present whereabouts, was going to work. They’d been covering themselves for such an emergency, undoubtedly, for a good many years and, due to telepathy, they certainly knew enough not to leave any clues around, of any kind.

But nobody, Malone told himself, was perfect. There were clues lying around somewhere, he was sure of that; there had to be. The problem was, simply, to figure out where to look, and what to look for.

Somewhere, the clues were sitting quietly and waiting for him to find them. The thought cheered him slightly, but not very much. Instead, he went into the kitchen and started heating water for coffee. He thought there might be a long night ahead of him, and sighed gently. But there was no help for it. The work had to be done, and done quickly.

But when eight cigars had been reduced to ash, and what seemed like several gallons of coffee had sloshed their way into Malone’s interior workings, his mind was as blank as a baby’s. The lovely, opalescent dawn began to show in the East, and Malone swore at it. Then, haggard, red-eyed, confused, violently angry, and not one inch closer to a solution, he fell into a fitful doze on his couch.

* * * * *

When he awoke the sun was high in the sky, and outside his window the cheerful sound of traffic floated in the air. Downstairs somebody was playing a television set too loudly, and the voice reached Malone’s semi-aware mind in a great tinny shout:

“And now, the makers of Bon-Ton B-Complex Bolsters—the blanket of health—present Mother Kohler’s Chit-Chat Hour!”

The invisible audience screamed and howled. Malone ripped out a particularly foul oath and sat up on the couch. “That,” he muttered, “is a fine thing to wake up to.” He focused his eyes, with only slight difficulty, on his watch. The time was exactly noon.

“But first,” the announcer burbled downstairs, “a word from Mother Kohler herself, about the brand new special B-Complex _Irradiated_ Bolster you can get at your neighborhood stores....”

“Shut up,” Malone said. He had wasted a lot of time doing nothing but sleeping, he told himself. This was no time to be listening to television. He got up and found, to his vague surprise, that he felt a lot better and more clear-headed than he’d been feeling. Maybe the sleep had done him some good.

He yawned, blinked and stretched, and then he padded into the bathroom, showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes. He thought about having a morning cup of coffee, but last night’s dregs appeared to have taken up permanent residence in his digestive tract, and he decided against it at last. He swallowed some orange juice and toast and then, heaving a great sigh of resignation and brushing crumbs off his shirt, he teleported himself over to his office.

He was going to have to face Burris eventually, he knew.

And now was just as good, or as bad, a time as any.

Malone didn’t hesitate. He punched the button on his intercom for Burris’ office and then sat back, with his eyes closed, for the well-known voice.

It didn’t come.

Instead, Wolf, the director’s secretary, spoke up.

“Burris isn’t in, Malone,” he said. “He had to fly to Miami. I can get a call through to him on the plane, if it’s urgent, but he’ll be landing in about fifteen minutes. And he did say he’d call this afternoon.”

“Oh,” Malone said. “Sure. Okay. It isn’t urgent.” He was just as glad of the reprieve; it gave him one more chance to work matters through to a solution, and report success instead of failure. “But what’s going on in Miami?” he added.

“Don’t you read the papers?” Wolf asked.

Everybody, Malone reflected, seemed to be asking him that lately. “I haven’t had time,” he said.

“The governor of Mississippi was assassinated yesterday, at Miami Beach,” Wolf said.

“Ah,” Malone said. He thought about it for a second. “Frankly,” he said, “this does not strike me as an irreparable loss to the nation. Not even to Mississippi.”

“You express my views precisely,” Wolf said.

“How about the killer?” Malone said. “I gather they haven’t got him yet, or Burris wouldn’t be on his way down.”

“No,” Wolf said. “The killer would be on his way here instead. They haven’t got him, Malone. It seems Governor Flarion was walking along Collins Avenue when somebody fired at him, using a high-powered rifle with, I guess, a scope sight.”

“Professional,” Malone commented.

“It looks like it,” Wolf said. “Nobody even heard the sniper’s shot; the governor just fell over, right there in the street. And by the time his bodyguards found out what had happened, it was impossible even to be sure just which way he was facing when the shot had been fired.”

“And, as I remember Collins Avenue—” Malone started.

“Right,” Wolf said. “Out where Governor Flarion was taking his stroll, there’s an awful lot of it to search. The boys are trying to find somebody who might have seen a man acting suspicious in any of the nearby buildings, or heard a shot, or seen anybody at all lurking or loitering anywhere remotely close to the scene.”

“Lovely,” Malone said. “Sounds like a nice complicated job.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Wolf said. “There’s also the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce. According to them, Flarion died of a heart attack, and not even in Miami Beach. The bullet and the body are supposed to be written off as just coincidences, to keep the fair name of Miami Beach unsullied.”

“All I can say,” Malone offered, “is good luck. This is the saddest day in American history since the assassination of Huey P. Long.”

“Agreed,” Wolf said. “Want me to tell Burris you called?”

“Right,” Malone said. He flicked off.

Now, he asked himself, how did the assassination of Governor Nemours P. Flarion fit in with anything? Granted, good old Nemours P. had been a horrible mistake, a paranoid, self-centered, would-be dictator whose talents as a rabble-rouser and a fearmonger had somehow managed to get him elected to a governorship. Certainly nobody felt particularly unhappy about his death. But he wouldn’t fit into the pattern. Malone reminded himself that that was one more thing he had to find out when he got the chance.

The trouble lay in finding an opportunity, he thought—and then he corrected himself.

Not _finding_ it—_making_ it. Nobody was going to hand him anything on a silver serving salver.

He punched the intercom again and got the Records office.

“Yes, sir?” a familiar voice said.

“Potter?” Malone said. “This is Malone. I want facsimiles of everything we have on the Psychical Research Society, on Sir Lewis Carter, and on Luba Vasilovna Garbitsch. Both of those last are connected with the Society.”

“Right,” Potter said. “They’ll be up at once.”

Then he punched again, and asked for the latest copy of the Washington _Post_. He gave the article on Governor Flarion one quick glance, but it didn’t contain anything in the way of facts that he hadn’t already had from Wolf. After that, he left it and concentrated on the more prosaic, human-interest news, the smaller stories.

FIFTH SPLINTER GROUP FORMS IN DCA BATTLE

That was an interesting one, he thought. The Daughters of Colonial Americans had about reached the point of diminishing returns in their battle over the claims of Rose Carswell Elder, a descendant of a Negro freedman named William Elder who had lived in Boston in 1776 and fought on the side of the Colonies during the Revolution. One more splinter group, Malone thought, and there’d be as many splinters as members. Rose Carswell Elder was pressing her claim for membership, and the ladies were replying by throwing crockery and hard words at each other.

Then there was the Legion of American War Veterans. The headline on this one read:

LAWV OUSTS ‘ROWDIES’: AID MEETING CONTINUES

The “rowdies,” Malone discovered, were a large minority group that wanted the good old days of electric canes, paper hats, whistles and pretty girls. “The Legion has grown up,” a spokesman told them. “This convention is being held to discuss the possibility of increased technological aid to India and Africa. There is no place for tomfoolery or high jinks.”

The expulsion order had been carried by a record majority.

And then there were two items, on different pages, that seemed to contradict each other. The first was a small headline on page fourteen:

RESIGNATIONS REACH NEW HIGH IN U.S. COLLEGE FACULTIES

Teachers were apparently resigning all over the place, in virtually every department of virtually every college. That made sense. And the other item, on page three, made just as much sense:

HIGHER TAXES VOTED THROUGHOUT U.S.
FOR TEACHER INCOME RISE
State and Federal Aid Also Promised
in Drive to Raise Salaries Now

Apparently, teachers were resigning just as they were about to get more money than they’d ever seen before. But Malone could fit that into the pattern easily enough; it was perfectly obvious, once he thought about it.

Malone didn’t have time to go through much more of the paper; the facsimile records he’d been waiting for arrived, and he put the _Post_ aside and concentrated on them instead. Maybe somewhere in the records was the clue he desperately needed.

The PRS was widely spread, all right. It had branches in almost every major city in the United States, in Europe, South Africa, South America and Australia. There was even a small branch society in Greenland. True, the Communist disapproval of such non-materialistic, un-Marxian objectives as Psychical Research showed up in the fact that there were no registered branches in the Sino-Soviet bloc. But that, Malone thought, didn’t really matter. Maybe in Russia they called themselves the Lenin Study Group, or the Better Borshcht League. He was fairly sure, from what he’d experienced, that the PRS had some kind of organization even behind the Iron Curtain.

Money didn’t seem to be much of a problem, either. Malone checked for the supporters of the organization and found a microfilmed list that ran into the hundreds of thousands of names, most of them ordinary people who seemed to be interested in spiritualism and the like, and who donated a few dollars apiece each year to the PRS. Besides this mass of small donations, of course, there were a few large ones, from independently wealthy men who gave support to the organization and seemed actively interested in its aims.

It wasn’t an unusual picture; it was just an exceptionally big one.

Malone sighed and went on to the personal dossiers.

Sir Lewis Carter himself was a well-known astronomer and mathematician. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Mathematical Society. He had been knighted for his contributions in higher mathematics only two years before he had come to live in the United States. Malone went over the papers dealing with his entry into the country carefully, but they were all in order and they contained absolutely no clues he could use.

Sir Lewis’ books on political and historical philosophy had been well-received, and he had also written a novel, _But Some Are More Equal_, which, for a few weeks after publication, had managed to reach the bottom of the best-seller list.

And that was that. Malone tried to figure out whether all this information did him any good at all, and he didn’t have to think for very long. The answer was no. He opened the next dossier.

Luba Vasilovna Garbitsch had been born in New York. Her mother had been a woman of Irish descent named Mary O’Keefe, and had died in ’68. Her father, of course, had now been revealed as a Russian agent, and was at present making his home, such as it probably was, in good old Moscow.

Malone sighed. Somewhere in the dossiers, he was sure, there was a clue, the basic clue that would tell him everything he needed to know. His prescience had never been so strong; he knew perfectly well that he was staring at the biggest, most startling and most complete disclosure of all. And he couldn’t see it.

He stared at the folders for a long minute. What did they tell him? What was the clue?

And then, very slowly, the soft light of a prodigal sun illuminated his mind.

“Mr. Malone,” Malone said gently, “you are a damned fool. There are times when it is necessary to discard the impossible after you have seen that the obscure is the obvious.”

He wasn’t sure whether that meant anything, or even whether he knew what he was saying. He was sure of only one thing: the final answer.

And it _was_ obvious. Obvious as all hell.

13

There was, of course, only one thing to do, and only one place to go. Malone went downstairs without even stopping to wave farewell to the agent-in-charge, and climbed into the big, specially-built FBI Lincoln that waited for him.

“Want a driver?” one of the mechanics asked.

“No, thanks,” Malone said. “This one’s a solo job.”

That was for sure. He drove out onto the streets and into the heavy late afternoon traffic of Washington, D. C. The Lincoln handled smoothly, but Malone didn’t press his luck among the rushing cars. He wasn’t in any hurry. He had all the time in the world, and he knew it. They—and, for once, Malone knew just who “they” were—would still be waiting for him when he got there.

_If_ he got there, he thought suddenly, dodging a combination roadblock consisting of a green Plymouth making an illegal turn, a fourteen-year-old boy on a bicycle and a sweet young girl pushing a baby carriage. He managed to get past and wiped his forehead with one hand. He continued driving, even more carefully, until he was out of the city.

It took quite a lot of time. Washington traffic was getting worse and worse with every passing month, and the pedestrians were as nonchalant as ever. As Malone turned a corner, a familiar face popped into view, practically in front of his car. He swerved and got by without committing homicide, and a cheerful voice said: “Thanks, sorry.”

“It’s okay, Chester,” Malone said. The big man skipped back to the sidewalk and watched the car go by. Malone knew him slightly, a private eye who did some work on the fringes of Washington crime; basically a nice guy, but a little too active for Malone’s taste.

For a second he thought of asking the man to accompany him, but the last thing Malone needed was muscle. What he wanted was brains, and he even thought he might be developing some of those.

He was nearly sure of it by the time he finally did leave the city and get out onto the highway that went south into the depths of Virginia. And, while he drove, he began to use that brain, letting his reflexes take over most of the driving problems now that the Washington traffic tangle was behind him.

He took all his thoughts from behind the shield that had sheltered them and arrayed them neatly before him. Everything was perfectly clear; all he had to do now was explain it.

Malone had wondered, over the years, about the detectives in books. They always managed to wrap everything up in the last chapter—and that was all right. But they always had a whole crowd of suspects listening to them, too. And Malone knew perfectly well that he could never manage a set-up like that. People would be interrupting him. Things would happen. Dogs would rush in and start a fight on the floor. There would be earthquakes, or else somebody would suddenly faint and interrupt him.

But now, at long last, he realized, he had his chance.

Nobody, he thought happily, could interrupt him. And he could explain to his heart’s content.

Because the members of the PRS were telepathic. And Malone, he thought cheerfully, was not.

Somebody, he was sure, would be tuned in on him as he drove toward their Virginia hiding place. And he hoped that that somebody would alert everybody else, so they could all tune in and hear his grand final explanation of everything.

_And a hearty good afternoon to everybody_, he thought. _A very hearty and happy and sunny good afternoon to all—and most especially to Miss Luba Garbitsch. I hope she’s the one who’s tuned in—or that somebody has alerted her by now, because I’d rather talk to her than to anyone else I can think of out there._

_Nothing personal, you understand. It’s just that I’d like to show off a little. I don’t need to hide anything from you—as a matter of plain, simple fact, I can’t. Not with my shield down._

He paused then, and, in his imagination, he could almost hear Lou’s voice.

“I’m listening, Kenneth,” the voice said. “Go on.”

_Well, then_, he thought. He fished around in his mind for a second, wondering exactly where to start. Then he decided, in the best traditions of the detective story, not to mention _Alice in Wonderland_, to start at the beginning.

_The dear old Psychical Research Society_, he thought, _had been going along for a good many years now—since the 1880’s, as a matter of fact, or somewhere near there. That’s a long time and a lot of research. A lot of famous and intelligent men and women have belonged to the Society. And in all that time, they’ve worked hard, and worked sincerely, in testing every kind of psychic phenomenon. They’ve worked impartially and scientifically to find out whether a given unusual incident was explicable in terms of known natural laws, or was the result of some unknown force._

_And it’s hardly surprising that, after about a hundred years of work, something finally came of it._

“Not surprising at all,” he imagined Lou’s voice saying. “You’re making things very clear, Kenneth.”

Or had that been “Sir Kenneth”? Malone wasn’t sure, but it didn’t really matter. He spun the car around a curve in the highway, smiled gently to himself, and went on.

_Naturally, to the average man in the street, the Society was just a bunch of crackpots, and the more respected and famous the people who belonged to it, the happier he was; it just proved his superiority to them. He didn’t deal with crackpot notions, did he?_

_No, the Society did. And nobody except the members paid much attention to what was going on._

_I remember one of the book facsimiles you gave me, for instance. Some man, whose name I can’t recall, wrote a great “exposé” of the Society, in which he tried to prove that Sir Lewis Carter and certain other members were trying to take over the world and run it to suit themselves, making a sort of horrible dictatorship out of their power and position. At that, he wasn’t really far from the truth, though he had it turned around a little. But the book shows that he has no knowledge whatever of what psionics is, or how it works. He seems to me to be just a little afraid of it, which probably adds to his ignorance. And, as a result, he got a twisted idea of what the PRS is actually doing._

He could almost hear Lou’s voice again. “Yes,” she was saying. “I remember the book. It was put in our reference library for its humorous aspects.”

_That’s right_, Malone thought. _It would be only funny to you. But it would be frightening and terrible to an awful lot of people simply because they wouldn’t understand what the Society was all about._

“All right,” Lou’s voice said helpfully. “And what _is_ it all about?”

Malone settled back in the driver’s seat as the car continued to spin along the road. _It seems to me_, he thought carefully, _that any telepath has to go one of two ways. Either, like Her Majesty or the others we found when we discovered her two years ago, the telepath ends up insane—or perhaps commits suicide, which is simply one step further in retreat—or else he learns to understand and control his own powers, and to understand other human beings so well that, if he actually did control the world, everyone would benefit in the long run._

_The difference between the two kinds is the difference between Her Majesty and the PRS._

“That’s good thinking,” he could hear Lou say.

_No, it isn’t_, he thought; _it’s no more than guessing, and it could be just as wild as you please. But there is one thing I do know: the way to get a better world, or anyhow the first step, is to clear the road ahead. And that means getting rid of the fools, idiots, maniacs, blockheads, morons, psychopaths, paranoids, timidity-ridden, fear-worshipers, fanatics, thieves, criminals and a whole lot more._

“Get rid of them?” Lou’s voice said.

_Well_, Malone thought, _I don’t mean they’ve got to be killed or driven out of the civilized world. You’ve just got to get them out of any place where their influence is heavily felt on society as a whole._

“All right,” Lou’s voice said pleasantly. “And how could we go about that? Do we write nasty letters to the editor?”

_There’s a much more effective way_, Malone thought. _There’s no trouble in getting rid of a man if you can make him expose himself. And you’ve managed that pretty well. You’ve thwarted their idiotic plans, made them stumble over their own fumble-mindedness, played on their neuroses, concocted errors for them to fight and, in general, rigged things in any possible way so that they’d quit, or get fired, or lose elections, or get arrested, or just generally get put out of circulation somehow._

_It’s extremely effective—and it works very well._

_Sometimes, you’ve only had to put the blocks to individuals. Sometimes whole nations have had to go. And sometimes it’s been in-between, and you’ve managed to foul up whole organizations with misplaced papers missent messages, error, and changed minds and everything else you can think of._

_As a matter of fact, it sounds like fun._

“Well,” he imagined Lou saying, “it is fun, in away. But it’s a deadly serious business, too.”

_Sure it is_, Malone thought. _I think the first time that came home to me was when I saw what was happening in Russia, and compared it to what had been going on over here. Tom Boyd saw that, too, when I pointed it out to him—as you probably know if you were spying on my mind at the time._

_Not that I mind that in the least._

_Come more often, by all means._

_But Tom, in case you weren’t listening, said: “Over here there are a lot of confused jerks and idiots.... And in Russia there’s a lot of confusion.”_

_Now, that’s perfectly true, and it spells out the difference. Over here, you’ve been confusing the jerks and the idiots, getting rid of them so the system can work properly. Over in Russia, on the other hand, you’ve left the jerks and the idiots all alone to do their dirty work, and you’ve just added to the confusion where necessary, so that the system will break down of its own weight._

“But, after all,” Lou said, “things look pretty bad over here, too. Look at the papers.”

_Everybody_, Malone thought, _has been telling me to go and look at the newspapers. And when I do look at them I find all sorts of evidence of confusion. Teachers resigning, senators and representatives goofing up bills on Congress, gang wars cluttering up the streets with cadavers and making things tough for the Sanitation Department, factional fights in various organizations. Now, all of that looks pretty horrible in the papers, but do you know something? It isn’t horrible at all._

_It’s pretty damn good, as a matter of fact._

_The teachers who are resigning, for instance, are the nincompoops who’ve got to be pruned out so that competent teachers can come in. And, with the higher salaries, more and more competent men and women are going to be attracted to the job. The universities are going to be freer and better places to work in; they won’t be monopolies any more._

“Monopolies?” Lou said.

_In restraint of knowledge_, Malone thought. _The old monopoly was in restraint of trade, and legal action helped to kill that kind. The monopoly in restraint of knowledge took a little more killing, but you’re doing the job quite nicely. And not only in the schools._

_The factional fights are having the same result. Look at the AAAM, for instance. That organization is a monopoly, pure and simple. Simple, anyhow. And what the factional fights are doing to it is just breaking up the monopoly and letting knowledge free again._

_And then we come to Congress. Senators and representatives are having a terrible time, some of them. There’s a fight going on between Furbisher and Deeks because Deeks has discovered some evidence against Furbisher. Who’s having the terrible time?_

_All of them?_

_Nope. Furbisher is. Deeks isn’t._

_And that’s the way it’s going all over. The useful, necessary legislation is going through Congress now without being cluttered up by stupid dam bills and water bills and other idiocies that simply clog the works._

_And then, of course, there are the gang wars. Now, I feel as sorry for the Sanitation Department as anybody, but at least they’re cleaning the streets for good now. The boys who are dying off and getting sent to hospitals and jails are just the ones who should have been sent away long ago. Everybody knows that, but nobody can prove it._

_Except the PRS._

_And the PRS is busy doing just what it can about that proof._

_And all it takes is a few of you. I don’t know how many—I don’t know how many of you there really are, for that matter. But it must be a fair number to stock all your branches with “top-level” executives and the lower-level men and women who really believe in the PRS blind, and do their best to keep it working._