Psi-High and Others (Ace G-730) Read online

  ALAN E. NOURSE

  PSI HIGH AND OTHERS

  ACE BOOKS, INC.

  PROLOGUE

  FOR fourteen days, by Earth reckoning, the outpost ship of the Watchers patiently continued in its orbit, circling the great planet called Jupiter like a silent shadow, waiting for some sign of Kadar’s return.

  The ship had come silently from halfway across the Galaxy, responding to a prearranged call signal. Now it was here, an undetected visitor to this remote solar province with its dwarf yellow star and its ten obscure planets. It was not the first time an outpost ship had come here, although visits had been relatively infrequent in the time since life had first appeared on the third planet of this star. Many in the Confederation—especially those with short memories—had opposed surveillance of such a backwater region at all, but the Watchers as usual had prevailed. They knew from long experience that it was not the remoteness of a new-appearing race that mattered, but its intelligence and its potential to build—or to destroy—the Confederation in the future. Once a people had broken free from the star that spawned them, remoteness was no longer a consideration. But the nature of the people was something else.

  Now, as the outpost ship swung in its orbit, no ray of sunlight reflected from its surface. No radar signal bounced back to reveal even a shadow. The physical substance of the ship and the two Watchers aboard it were such that no radiant energy could be reflected; indeed, if an Earth ship were to come Into collision course with the Watchers it would pass right through and beyond them without so much as a hint that a “collision’' had occurred. It was necessary, under the Covenant, that the Watchers remain undetected, and the Covenant had not been violated in all the tens of thousands of years that these ships had been regular visitors to this solar system. When contact had been made with these developing Earthmen, its true nature had always been concealed, fust as the Covenant demanded.

  And now the Watchers were waiting for the end of one such contact.

  Of the two aboard the craft, only the younger was impatient. “Why so long?” he asked with increasing urgency. “He called for the rendezvous himself. Why does he keep us waiting? What could have gone wrong?”

  The Old One sighed. Service with a Young One fresh from the academy was always more trial than joy. The eager textbook knowledge of the Covenant and its surveillance procedures were fine, but there was no experience to modulate all this frantic energy, and above all, no patience. “Nothing has gone wrong,” the Old One said. “Kadar will come, but he dare not just disappear from their midst for no reason. It must be done in the proper way, and that takes tune.’’ “But so much time I” the Young One said. “Fourteen of their days, and no end in sight.”

  “And this is so much time? After watching these stubom people for millennia?” The Old One smiled. “Of course you’re eager to be gone; so am I. But consider Kadar’s problem scientifically.”

  The Young One caught the gentle note of reproach. “Very well, sir. If you will instruct me.”

  “Just consider: his departure would have to appear consistent with the way Earth people take leave of things—a ‘death’, so to speak—but it must also appear quite unremarkable. And in particular, nothing even to hint of foul play. Their people at the Hoffman Medical Center are not foois. And then with his ‘death’ accomplished, there would be still further delay. For all their advancement, Earth people still cling to certain long-revered rituals. Funerals, for instance.”

  The Old One turned back to the space scanner as his young apprentice thought about this. Finally the Young One said, “Of course, I know they have come a long way, these Earthmen, but there are still many things I do not see. Why now, after all this time, are we ending our surveillance?"

  “Because the time has come to withdraw,” the Old One said.

  “How do we know? Has the Confederation already reached a decision?”

  “Not yet. But it will, as soon as we return."

  “How can they, when we know so little about these creatures?”

  “We know more about them than you think,” the Old One said. “It isn’t the quantity of data that makes the difference, it’s the quality. And basically, a decision for or against quarantine and possible imprisonment hangs upon one question: will these people one day become peaceful and productive partners in the Galactic Confederation, or will they become a malignancy in our midst that must then, too late, be confronted and expunged? There was one such malignant race, if you recall your history. They had many qualities in common with these Earthmen in their early days, and it took a million years of warfare to stop them. The Confederation cannot allow another such race the freedom to expand.”

  "And you think a decision can be reached so soon?” the Young One asked. “Oh, I know that all the known intelligent races have followed certain patterns. Always they have been aggressive. Always they have been curious. Always they have fought their own wars, and always they have learned to control mass-energy conversion. But how can the future be predicted from these things early enough to do any good?”

  “It can’t,” the Old One replied. “But those parts of the pattern don’t matter in the long run. You’ve ignored the three factors that do matter, the three things we had to know about these Earthmen before a decision could even be possible. How they deal with nuclear energy Is none of our concern. How they—or any race—deal with three other key universal problems is very much our concern, and a valid basis for predicting what the future holds."

  “And those three problems?”

  “The obvious ones. How they use their growing knowledge of their own physiology and biochemistry, for healthy growth or for destruction. How they deal with their own evolutionary development, especially when the higher extrasensory powers begin to appear, as they always do. How they handle their first encounters with other intelligent creatures. Simple enough things, yet utterly crucial, because the solutions they find mold the pattern of their future.” The old one turned once again to scan the void of space around them. “That is why we came to this remote region in the first place: because intelligent life had appeared here and we had to know what solutions they found. With these people it has been easy. They’ve devoloped so very fast, for one thing; no other race in history has ever scrambled up as urgently as these people have. Which could make them all the more dangerous, of course, if they found the wrong solutions. In additon, they have always had a burgeoning curiosity about their own minds and bodies; and recently a single research organization, their so-called Hoffman Center, has been deeply involved in all three of the areas we have been watching. Useful, for vis. A single observation post from which we could follow all three lines of development.”

  The Old One leaned back, smiling at his young companion. "So now the data is collected. Kadar will bring nothing new with him when he comes. Our tapes and records here already tell the whole story; perhaps you should review them again, while we wait. You might see then why our surveillance is over. And perhaps”—he paused, thinking once again of the three particular crises that he himself had witnessed among these Earthmen during his long centuries as Watcher here— “perhaps you will even see what the decision must ultimately be.”

  THE MARTYR

  I

  Four and one-half hours after Martian sunset, the'last light in the Headquarters Building finally flicked out.

  Carl Golden stamped his feet against the cold, blowing into his cupped hands to warm them as he pressed back into the shadow of the doorway across from Headquarters. The night air bit his nostrils and turned his breath into clouds of gray vapor in the semidarkness. The atmosphere screens surrounding the Ironstone Colony on Mars kept the oxygen in, all right, but they could never keep t
he biting cold out. After this long vigil he was chilled to the bone and bored to the point of screaming, but when the light at last went out across the way, boredom vanished and warm blood prickled through his shivering legs.

  He slid back tight against the coarse black stone of the doqrway, peering intently across the road into the gloom. Who had been' staying so late? The girl, of course. He’d thought so, but wasn’t sure until he saw her coming out, heard the faint chink of keys as she pulled the heavy door down on its counterweights behind her and locked it. A quick glance left and right, and she started down the frosty road toward the lights of the colony.

  Carl Golden waited until she was out of sight. No briefcase; good, good. That was one loophole he had thought of while he stood there freezing. Not that anybody took any work home around here, but there was always a chance. His heart pounded as he forced himself to wait ten minutes more; then, teeth chattering in the cold, he ducked swifdy across the dark road to the low, one-story building.

  Through the window he could see the lobby call-board. All the lights were dark. Good, again—no one remained in the lower levels. Headquarters ran by routine, just like everything else in this god-forsaken hole. Utter, abysmal, trancelike routine. The girl had been a little later than usual, but that was because of the supply ship coming in tomorrow, no doubt. Reports to get ready, supply requisitions to fill out, personnel recommendations to complete—

  —and the final reports on Armstrongs death. Mustn’t forget that, Carl. The real story, the absolute, factual truth, without any nonsense. The reports that would go, ultimately, to Walter Rinehart and to no one else, just as all the other important reports from the Ironstone Colony had been going for so many years. Only this time Walter Rinehart was in for a surprise.

  Carl skirted the long, low building, clinging to the black shadows of the side wall. Halfway around he came to the supply chute, covered with a heavy moulded-stone cover.

  Now?

  It had to be now, and this was the only way; it had taken four endless months here for him to discover that. Four months of this ridiculous masquerade, made all the more idiotic by the fact that every soul in the colony had accepted him for exacdy what he pretended to be, and never once challenged him; not even Terry Fisher, who habitually challenged everything and everybody, even when he was sober! But the four months of play-acting had told on Carl’s nerves; they showed in his reactions, in the hollows under his sharp brown eyes. The specter of a slip-up, an aroused suspicion, was always in his mind, and he knew that until he had the reports before his eyes, there was nothing Dan Fowler could do to save him if he betrayed himself. The night he’d left Earth, Dan had shaken his hand and said, “Remember, lad, I don’t know you. Sorry it's got to be that way, but we can’t risk it now.” And they couldn’t, of course. Not until they knew, for certain, who had murdered Kenneth Armstrong.

  They already knew why.

  The utter stillness of the place reassured him; he hoisted up the chute cover, threw it high, and worked his long legs and body into the chute. It was a steep slide downwards;

  he held his breath for an instant, listening, then let go. Blackness engulfed him as the cover snapped closed behind him. He went down fast, struck hard and rolled. The chute opened into the commissary in the third deep-level of the building; the place was as black as the inside of a pocket He tested unbroken legs with a sigh of relief, then limped around crates and boxes in the darkness to the place where the door ought to be.

  In the corridor beyond there was some light—dim phosphorescence from the Martian night-rock lining the walls and tiling the floor. Carl walked swiftly, aware of the deafening clack-clack of his heels on the ringing stone. At the end of the corridor he tried the heavy door.

  It complained, but it gave. Carl sighed his relief. It had been a quick, imperfect job of jimmying the lock; he had left it looking so obviously tampered with that he’d worried about it all day. But then, why would anyone test it? Unless they suspected a snake in their midst—

  Through the door he stepped into a black room again, started forward as the door swung shut behind him. Then somewhere a shoe scraped, the faintest rustle of sound. Carl froze. His own trouser leg? A trick of acoustics? He didn’t move a muscle.

  Silence. Then: “Carl?”

  His pocket light flickered around the room, revealing a secretary’s cubbyhole, a typewriter. It stopped on a pair of trouser legs, a body, slouched down in the soft plastifoam chair, a sleepy face, ruddy and bland, with a shock of sandy hair and quizzical eyebrows.

  “Terry! What are you doing here in the dark?”

  “Waiting for you, old boy.” The man leaned forward, grinning up at him. “You’re late, Carl. Should have made it sooner than this, sheems—seems to me.”

  Carl’s light moved past the man in the chair to the floor. The bottle was standing there, barely half full. "You’re drunk,” he said.

  “Course I’m drunk,” Terry Fisher laughed. “You think I was going to sober up after you left me at that bar tonight? No thanks, I'd rather be drunk, any day of the week, around this dump.”

  “Well, you’ve got to get out of here, go get drunk somewhere else.” Carl’s voice rose in bitter anger. Of all times, of all times—"Terry, how did you get in here? You’ve got to get out.”

  The man looked up, no longer laughing. "So do you. They’re on to you, Carl. I don’t think you know that, but they are.” He leaned forward precariously. “I had a talk with Bamess this morning, one of his nice ‘spontaneous’ chats, and he pumped the hell out of me and thought I was too drunk to know what he was doing. They’re expecting you to come here tonight—

  Carl tugged at the drunken man’s arm in the darkness. “Get out of here, Terry, or so help me—”

  Terry clutched at him. “Didn’t you hear me? They know about you. They know you’re no personnel supervisor. Bar-ness thinks you’re spying for the Asian Bloc. They’re starting a Mars colony too, you know. Bamess is sure you’re selling them information.”

  “Bamess is an ass,” Carl said.

  “Of course, just like all the other Retreads they have running this place,” Terry said. “But Tm not an ass, and you didn’t fool me for two days.”

  Carl gritted his teeth. How could Terry Fisher know? “For the last time—”

  Fisher lurched to his feet. “Look, friend, they’ll get you if you don’t go. They can try you and shoot you right on the spot, and Bamess will do it, too. I had to warn you that you’ve walked right into it, but you can still get away—” It was hateful but there was no other way. The drunken man’s head jerked up at the blow, and he gave a little grunt, then slid back down on the chair. Carl checked his pulse, then scrambled over his legs and headed for the vault door beyond. If they caught him now, Terry Fisher was right, they could shoot him on the spot. But give him five more minutes— The lock squeaked, and the vault door fell open. Inside he tore through the file cases, wrenched at the locker drawers in frantic haste, ripping the weak aluminum sheeting like thick tinfoil. Then he found the folder with KENNETH ARMSTRONG marked on the tab.

  Somewhere above him an alarm went off, screaming a mournful note through the building. He threw on the light switch, flooding the room with whiteness, and started through the papers in the folder one by one. No time to read what the papers said, a one-second look at each sheet was enough. Retinal photos were hard to superimpose swiftly and keep straight, but that was one reason why Carl Golden was on Mars right now instead of sitting in some office back on Earth.

  He scanned the last page, and threw the folder onto the floor. As he went through the door, he flipped out the light, raced with clattering footsteps down the corridor.

  Lights caught him from both sides, slicing the blackness like hot knives. “AH right, Golden. Stop right there.”

  Dark figures came out of the lights, ripped his clothing off without a word. Somebody wrenched open his mouth, shined a light in, rammed coarse cold fingers into his throat. There was a smell of sweat, and
harsh, angry whispers. Then: "All right, you snake, upstairs. Bamess wants to see you.”

  They packed him naked into the street, hurried him into a three-wheeled ground car. Five minutes later he was herded out of the car into another building, and Bamess, the Ironstone administrator, was glaring at him across the room.

  Odd things flashed through Carl’s mind. You seldom saw a Retread really get angry, but Bamess was angry. The man’s young-old face (the strange, utterly ageless amalgamation of sixty years of wisdom, superimposed by the youth of a twenty-year-old) had unaccustomed lines of wrath about the eyes and mouth. Bamess didn’t waste words. “What were you after down there?’'

  “Armstrong.” Carl cut the word out almost gleefully. "And

  I got what I wanted, and there’s nothing you or Walter Rinehart or anybody else can do about it now. I don’t know what I saw in that report, but I've got it recorded in my eyes and in my brain now and you can’t touch it.”

  “You stupid fool, we can peel your brain,” Bamess snarled.

  “Well, you won’t. You won’t dare.”

  Bamess glanced at the officer who had brought him in. “Jack-”

  "Senator Dan Fowler won’t like it,” said Carl.

  The administrator stopped short, blinking at him. He took a slow breath. Then he sank down into his chair. “Fowler,” he said, as though dawn was just breaking.

  “That’s right. Dan Fowler sent me up here. I’ve found what he wants. You shoot me now, and when they probe you, Dan will know that I found it, and you won’t be around for another rejuvenation.”

  Bamess looked suddenly old, and puzzled. “But what did he want?”

  “The truth about Kenneth Armstrong’s death. Not the World Hero, Died with His Boots on, pnd all that twaddle. Dan wanted the truth. Who killed him. Why this colony is grinding down from compound low to stop, and turning men like Terry Fisher into alcoholic bums. Why Ironstone is turning into a super-refined Birdie’s Rest for old men. But mostly who killed Armstrong, how he was murdered, who gave the orders. And if you don’t mind, I’d like my clothes back, I’m getting cold.”