Talents, Incorporated Part 20

"Gwenlyn says propaganda," said Morgan, "but I prefer to think of these two Talents as our Department for Disseminating Truthful Seditious Rumors. You've met Harms." The man waved his hand, his rings glittering.

"But I didn't tell you about Madame Porvis. She has the extraordinary talent of contagious fantasy. It is remarkably rare. She can daydream, and others contract her dreamings as if they were spread by germs."

The fat woman bridled. She still regarded Bors with a melting gaze.

Again he felt startled unease.

"It's been a great trial to me," she said in a peculiarly childish voice. "I had such trouble, before I knew what it was!"

"Er--trial?" asked Bors apprehensively.

"When I was just an overweight adolescent," she told him archly, "I daydreamed about my school's best athlete. Presently I found that my shocked fellow-students were gossiping to each other that he'd acted as I daydreamed. Other girls wouldn't look at him because they said he was madly in love with me."

The arrogant man with the rings made a scornful sound.

"He hated me," said Madame Porvis, ruefully, "because the gossip made him ridiculous, and it was only people picking up my daydreams!"

She looked at Morgan. He nodded encouragement.

"Years later," she said to Bors, "I grew romantic about an actor. He was not at all talented, but I daydreamed that he was, and also brilliant and worshipped by millions. Soon everybody seemed to believe it was true! Because I daydreamed it! He was given tremendous contracts, and--then I dared to daydream that he met and was fascinated by me!

Immediately there was gossip that it had happened! When he denied that he knew me,--and he didn't--and when he saw my picture and said he didn't _want_ to, I was crushed. I wove beautifully tragic fantasies about myself as pining away and dying because of his cruelty,--and soon it was common gossip that I had!" She sighed. "He was considered a villain, because I daydreamed of him that way. His career was ruined.

I've had to be very careful about my daydreams ever since."

"Madame Porvis's talent," Morgan said proudly, "is all the more remarkable because she realized herself that she had it. She lets ideas pop into her head and presently they pop into other people's heads and you have first-cla.s.s rumors running madly about. When her fantasies contain elements of truth, so do the rumors. You see?"

"It's most interesting," admitted Bors. "But--"

"Now Harms," said Morgan, "reads news-reports. He's specialized on those brought back by Gwenlyn and by you. He guesses at the news behind the news--and he knows when he's. .h.i.t it. He'll tell Madame Porvis the facts, she'll weave them into a fantasy and they'll spread like wildfire. Of course she can't plant new subjects in people's minds. But anybody who's ever heard of Mekin will pick up her fantasies about graft and inefficiency in its government. Riots against Mekin, and so on. However, one wants not only to spread seditious rumors about villains, but also about--say--pirates who go about fighting Mekin. Tell her stories about your men, if you like. Anything that's material for heroic defiance-fantasies against Mekin."

Bors found himself stubbornly resisting the idea. It might be that there was such a thing as precognition in the form Morgan had described. There might be such a thing as contagious fantasy. But on the other hand--

"I give up," he said. "I won't deny it and I can't believe it. I'll go about my business of piracy. But you, sir," he turned to Morgan, "you've got to keep Gwenlyn from taking risks!"

"True," said Morgan. "She could have some very unpleasant experiences.

I'll be more stern with her."

Gwenlyn did not seem alarmed.

"One more thing," Bors added. "They say the dictator of Mekin is superst.i.tious, that he patronizes fortune-tellers. Suppose one of _them_ is a Talent? Suppose _he_ gets precognized information?"

"I worry about that," admitted Morgan. "But I know that I have effective Talents. There's no evidence that _he_ has."

"He might have a Talent whose talent is confusing our Talents," Bors said with some sarcasm.

Morgan grinned tolerantly.

"Talk to these two. We've got some firm precognitions that make things look bad for Mekin."

He left the room. Gwenlyn remained, listening with interest when the conversation began, and now and then saying something of no great importance. But her presence kept Bors from feeling altogether like a fool. Madame Porvis looked at him with languishing, sentimental eyes.

Harms watched him accusingly.

Their questions were trivial. Bors told about the landings on Tralee and on Garen. The woman asked for details that would help her picture feats of derring-do. Bors hesitated, and did not quite tell her about the truck drivers on Tralee who volunteered the information that their loads were b.o.o.by-trapped. But he did stress the fact that the populations of dominated planets were on the thin edge of revolt. The suspicious Talent asked very little. He listened, frowning.

When it was over and they'd gone--the fat woman again somehow managing a gait which could only be called sinuous--Bors said abruptly, "What's this event you know of, a year ahead?"

"King Humphrey opening parliament on Kandar," said Gwenlyn pleasantly.

"There's another," said Bors, "which implies specifically that I'll still be alive."

"That?" said Gwenlyn. "That's another one. I won't talk about it. It implies that my father's going to retire from Talents, Incorporated."

Bors fumed.

"I don't like this prediction business," he said. "It still seems to hint that we're not free agents. Tell me," he said apprehensively. "That precognition about me, it doesn't include Madame Porvis?"

Gwenlyn laughed. "No. Definitely no!"

Bors grunted. Then he managed to grin.

"In that case I'll go pilfer some provisions so the fleet will be prepared to do what you tell me it won't, but which it has to be prepared to do. I suppose I'll be back?"

"I hope so," said Gwenlyn, smiling.

She gave him her hand. He left. He shook his head as he made his way to the _Sylva's_ s.p.a.ce-boat blister. He had it immediately taken to his new ship. It was a light cruiser of the same cla.s.s as the _Isis_. It would, of course, seem to be the same ship, and it had nearly the same crew aboard. No one of Morgan's freakish Talents was included this time, and Bors felt more than a little relieved. He inspected everything and made sure his drive-engineers were more tractable than they'd been on the _Isis_. He meant to build another low-power overdrive at once.

He cleared for departure with the flagship. He was swinging the ship toward his first destination when a call came from the _Sylva_. He was asked for. He went to a screen. He preferred to see Gwenlyn when he talked to her. She was there.

"_I've a memo for you_," she said briskly. "_There are cargo-ships aground on Ca.s.sis and Dover. There is a sort of patrol-squadron of warships aground on Meriden. Nothing on Avino. Are you recording this?_"

"I won't forget it," he said.

"_Then here's the situation on each of the subject worlds so far as cargo-ships and fighting ships are concerned. Our dowser can tell about them. Remember, this doesn't apply to ships in overdrive! We can't precognize anything about them unless we're at the destination they're heading for, and then only the time of arrival. And the dowser's information is strictly as of this moment._"

Bors nodded. Her tone was absolutely matter-of-fact. Bors was almost convinced.

She read off a list of statements with painstaking clarity. She'd evidently had the dowser go over the list of twenty-two dominated planets. Bors told himself that the events she reported were possibilities that might somehow be true.

"_Most of the Mekinese grand fleet_," she finished, "_is aground on Mekin itself. It's probably there for inspection and review or some such ceremony. There's no way to tell. But it's there. And that's the latest Talents, Incorporated information. As my father says, you can depend on it._"

"All right," said Bors. "Thanks." Then he added gruffly, "Take care of yourself."

She smiled at him and clicked off. Bors was confused because he couldn't quite believe that other matters could be predicted.

The new ship, the _Horus_, sped away in overdrive, leaving the fleet in orbit around the useless planet Glamis. Glamis was in a favorable state just now. It was a lush green almost from pole to pole, save where its seas showed a darker, muddy, bottom-color. It would look inviting to colonists. But at any time its sun could demonstrate its variability and turn it into a cloud-covered world of steaming prospective jungle, or in a slightly shorter time turn it to a glacier-world. The vegetation on Glamis was remarkable. The planet, though, was of no use to humanity because it was unpredictable.

The _Horus_ ran in overdrive for two days while a low-power unit was built in its engine-room, to go in parallel to the normal overdrive. But there was a double-throw switch in the line, now. Either the standard, multiple light-speed overdrive could be used, or the newer and vastly slower one, but not both together. The ship came out of overdrive in absolute emptiness with no sun anywhere nearby. She was surrounded on every hand by uncountable distant stars. The new circuit was brazed in.

It had a micro-timer included in its design. Within its certain, limited timing-capacity, it could establish or break a contact within the thousandth of a microsecond.

Bors made tests, target-practice of a sort. He let out a metal-foil balloon which inflated itself, making a sphere some forty feet in diameter. In the new low-speed overdrive he drew away from it for a limited number of microseconds. He measured the distance run. He made other runs, again measuring. From ten thousand miles away he made a return-hop to the target-balloon and came out within a mile of it.