Occasion for Disaster Part 31

"Don't underestimate yourself, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, rather severely. "But you do see what this little argument means, don't you?

I think you may a.s.sume that your telepathic contact is quite selective. If Willie can't read you, Sir Kenneth, believe me, n.o.body at all can ... unless you let them."

How he had developed this mental shield, he couldn't imagine, unless his subconscious had done it for him. Good old subconscious, he thought, always looking out for a person's welfare, preparing little surprises and things. Though he hoped vaguely that the next surprise, if there were a next one, would sneak up a little more gently. Being told flatly that your mind was not in operation was not a very good way to start an investigation.

Then he thought of something else. "Do you think this ... barrier of mine will keep out those little bursts of mental energy?" he said.

Her Majesty looked judicious. "I really do," she said. "It does appear quite impenetrable, Sir Kenneth. I can't understand how you're doing it. Or why, for that matter."

"Well--" Malone began.

Her Majesty raised a hand. "No," she said. "I'd rather not know, if you please." Her voice was stern, but just a little shaken. "The thought of blocking off thought--the only real form of communication that exists--is, frankly, quite horrible to me. I would rather be blinded, Sir Kenneth. I truly would."

Malone thought of Dr. Marshall and blushed. Her Majesty peered at him narrowly, and then smiled.

"You've been talking to my Royal Psychiatrist again, haven't you?" she said. Malone nodded. "Frankly, Sir Kenneth," she went on, "I think people pay too much attention to that sort of thing nowadays."

The subject, Malone recognized, was firmly closed. He cleared his throat and started up another topic. "Let's talk about these energy bursts," he said. "Do you still pick them up occasionally?"

"Oh, my, yes," Her Majesty said. "And it's not only me. Willie has been picking them up too. We've had some long talks about it, Willie and I. It's frightening, in a way, but you must admit that it's very interesting."

"Fascinating," Malone muttered. "Tell me, have you figured out what they might be, yet?"

Her Majesty shook her head. "All we know is that they do seem to occur just before a person intends to make a decision. The burst somehow appears to influence the decision. But we don't know how, and we don't know where they come from, or what causes them. Or even why."

"In other words," Malone said, "we know absolutely nothing new."

"I'm afraid not, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "But Willie and I do intend to keep working on it. It is important, isn't it?"

"Important," Malone said, "is not the word." He paused. "And now, if your Majesty will excuse me," he said, "I'll have to go. I have work to do, and your information has been most helpful."

"You may go, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, returning with what appeared to be real pleasure to the etiquette of the Elizabethan Court. "We are grateful that you have done so much, and continue to do so much, to defend the peace of Our Realm."

"I pledge myself to continue in those efforts which please Your Majesty," Malone said, and started back for the costume room. Once he'd changed into his regular clothing again he snapped himself back to the room he had rented in the Great Universal. He had a great deal of thinking to do, he told himself, and not much time to do it in.

However, he was alone. That meant he could light up a cigar--something which, as an FBI Agent, he didn't feel he should do in public. Cigars just weren't right for FBI Agents, though they were all right for ordinary detectives like Malone's father. As a matter of fact, he considered briefly hunting up a vest, putting it on and letting the cigar ash dribble over it. His father seemed to have gotten a lot of good ideas that way. But, in the end, he rejected the notion as being too complicated, and merely sat back in a chair, with an ashtray conveniently on a table by his side, and smoked and thought.

Now, he knew with reasonable certainty that Andrew J. Burris was wrong and that he, Malone, was right. The source of all the confusion in the country was due to psionics, not to psychodrugs and Walt Disney spies.

His first idea was to rush back and tell Burris. However, this looked like a useless move, and every second he thought about it made it seem more useless. He simply didn't have enough new evidence to convince Burris of anything whatever; psychiatric evidence was fine to back up something else, but on its own it was still too shaky to be accepted by the courts, in most cases. And Burris thought even more strictly than the courts in such matters.

Not only that, Malone realized with alarm, but even if he did manage somehow to convince Burris there was very little chance that Burris would stay convinced. If his mind could be changed by a burst of wild mental power--and why not? Malone reflected--then he could be unconvinced as often as necessary. He could be spun round and round like a top and never end up facing the way Malone needed him to face.

That left the burden of solving the problem squatting like a hunchback's hunch squarely on Malone's shoulders. He thought he could bear the weight for a while, if he could only think of some way of dislodging it. But the idea of its continuing to squat there forever was horribly unnerving. "Quasimodo Malone," he muttered, and uttered a brief prayer of thanks that his father had been spared a cla.s.sical education. "Ken" wasn't so bad. "Quasi" would have been awful.

He couldn't think of any way to get a fingerhold on the thing that weighed him down. Slowly, he went over it in his mind.

Situation: an unidentifiable something is attacking the United States with an untraceable something else from a completely unknown source.

Problem: how do you go about latching on to anything as downright nonexistent as all that?

Even the best detective, Malone told himself irritably, needed clues of some kind. And this thing, whatever it was, was not playing fair.

It didn't go around leaving b.l.o.o.d.y fingerprints or lipsticked cigarette b.u.t.ts or packets of paper matches with _Ciro's, Hollywood_, written on them. It didn't even have an alibi for anything that could be cracked, or leave tire marks or footprints behind that could be photographed. h.e.l.l, Malone thought disgustedly, it wasn't that the trail was cold. It just _wasn't_.

Of course, there were ways to get clues, he reflected. He thought of his father. His father would have gone to the scene of the crime, or questioned some of the witnesses. But the scene of the crime was anywhere and everywhere, and most of the witnesses didn't know they were witnessing anything. Except for Her Majesty, of course--but he'd already questioned her, and there hadn't been any clues he could recall in that conversation.

Malone stubbed out his cigar, lit another one absent-mindedly, and rescued his tie, which was working its slow way around to the side of his collar. There were, he remembered, three cla.s.sic divisions of any crime: method, motive and opportunity. Maybe thinking about those would lead somewhere.

As an afterthought, he got up, found a pencil and paper with the hotel's name stamped on them in gold and came back to the chair.

Clearing the ashtray aside, he put the paper on the table and divided the paper into three vertical columns with the pencil. He headed the first one _Method_, the second _Motive_ and the third _Opportunity_.

He stared at the paper for a while, and decided with some trepidation to take the columns one by one. Under _Method_, he put down: "Little bursts. Who knows cause?" Some more thought gave him another item, and he set it down under the first one: "Psionic. Look for psionic people?"

That apparently was all there was to the first column. After a while he moved to number two, _Motive_. "Confuse things," he wrote with scarcely a second's reflection. But that didn't seem like enough. A few minutes more gave him several other items, written down one under the other. "Disrupt entire US. Set US up for invasion? Martians?

Russians? CK: Is Russia having trble?" That seemed to exhaust the subject and with some relief he went on. But the t.i.tle of the next column nearly stopped him completely.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_Opportunity._ There wasn't anything he could put down under that one, Malone told himself, until he knew a great deal more about method. As things stood at present, the best entry under _Opportunity_ was a large, tastefully done question mark. He made one, and then sat back to look at the entire list and see what help it gave him:

_Method_ Little bursts. Who knows cause?

Psionic. Look for psionic people?

_Motive_ Confuse things.

Disrupt entire US.

Set US up for invasion?

Martians?

Russians?

CK: Is Russia having trble?

_Opportunity_ ?

Somehow, it didn't seem to be much help, when he thought about it. It had a lot of information on it, but none of the information seemed to lead anywhere. It did seem to be established that the purpose was to confuse or disrupt the United States, but this didn't seem to point to anybody except a Russian, an alien or a cosmic practical joker. Malone could see no immediate way of deciding among the trio. However, he told himself, there are other ways to start investigating a crime.

There must be.

Psychological methods, for instance. People had little gray cells, he remembered from his childhood reading. Some of the more brainy fictional detectives never stooped to anything so low as an actual physical clue. They concentrated solely on finding a pattern in the crimes that indicated, infallibly, the psychology of the individual.

Once his psychology had been identified, it was only a short step to actually catching him and putting him in jail until his psychology changed for the better. Or, of course, until it disappeared entirely and was buried, along with the rest of him, in a small wood box.

That wasn't Malone's affair. All he had to do was take the first few steps and actually find the man. And perhaps psychology and pattern was the place to start. Anyhow, he reflected, he didn't have any other method that looked even remotely likely to lead to anything except brain-f.a.g, disappointment, and catalepsy.

But he didn't have enough cases to find a pattern. There must, he thought, be a way to get some more. After a few seconds he thought of it.

At first he thought of asking Room Service for all the local and out-of-state papers, but that, he quickly saw, was a little unwise.

People didn't come to Las Vegas to catch up on the news; they came to get away from it. A man might read Las Vegas papers, and possibly even his home town's paper if he couldn't break himself of the pernicious habit. But n.o.body on vacation would start reading papers from everywhere.