The Penal Cluster Part 4

_What?_ Her thought carried astonishment. _Why, Dave--he'd_ have _to be!

How else could he have controlled this Sir Lewis--whatsisname--Huntley?_

_Well--I've got a funny idea_, Houston replied. _Look at it this way: So far as we know, there are two Groups of telepaths. There's our own Group. All we want is to be left alone. We don't read a Normal's mind unless we have to, and we don't try to control one unless our lives are threatened. We stay under cover, out of everyone's way._

_Then there are the megalomaniacs. They try, presumably, to gain wealth and power by controlling Normals. And they get caught with monotonous regularity. Right?_

The girl caught an odd note in that thought. _What do you mean, "monotonous regularity"?_ she asked.

_I mean_, Houston thought savagely, _why is it they're all so b.l.o.o.d.y stupid? Look at this Harris guy; he is supposed to have taken over Sir Lewis's mind in order to get a thousand pounds. So what did he have Sir Lewis do? Parade all around the city to pick up a PD Police net, and then give his address to a cabman in a loud voice and lead the whole net right to Harris! How stupid can a man get?_

_It does look pretty silly_, Dorrine agreed. _Have you got an explanation?_

_Several_, Houston told her. _And I don't know which one is correct._

_Let's have them_, the girl thought.

Houston gave them to her. None of them, he knew, was completely satisfactory, but they all made more sense that the theory that Harris had done what the PD Police claimed he'd done.

Theory Number One: The real megalomaniac Controller had taken over Sir Lewis's mind and made him draw out the thousand pounds and head west on Leadenhall Street. Somehow, the Controller had found out that Sir Lewis was being followed, and had steered him away from the original destination, heading him toward the innocent Robert Harris. That implied that the Controller had been within a few dozen yards of the net men that afternoon. A Controller can't control a mind directly from a distance, although orders can be implanted which will cause a man to carry out a plan of action, even though he may be miles from the Controller. But in order to change those plans, the Controller would have to be within projection range.

Theory Two: Robert Harris actually was a megalomaniac Controller; with a long record of success behind him, who had finally grown careless.

At that point, Dorrine interjected a thought: _Isn't it possible that he wanted to be caught?_

Houston mulled it over for a minute. _A guilt-punishment reaction? He wanted to be punished for his crimes? I suppose that might account for part of it, yes. But if he'd been so successful, what did he do with all his money?_

Dorrine gave a mental shrug. _Who knows? What's Theory Number Three?_

Number Three was the screwiest one of all, yet it made a weird kind of sense. Suppose that Sir Lewis himself had had a grudge against Harris?

The whole thing would have been ridiculously easy; all he'd have to do would be to act just as he had acted and then give evidence against Harris.

The thing that made it odd wasn't the actual frame-up (if that's what it was); these days, every crime was blamed on a Controller. A man accused of murder simply looked virtuous and said that he would never have done such a thing if he hadn't been under the power of a Controller. Ditto for robbery, rape, and any other felony you'd care to name.

An aura of fear hung over the whole Earth; each man half suspected everyone with whom he came in contact of being a Controller.

So it wasn't that the frame-up in itself was peculiar in this case; it was simply that it wasn't Sir Lewis Huntley's style. If Sir Lewis had wanted to get Harris, he'd have done it legally, without any underhanded frame-ups. Still, the theory remained as a possibility.

_I suppose it does_, Dorrine agreed, _but how does that tie in with our own Group? What about Jackson and Marcy? What happened to them?_

_I don't know_, Houston admitted, _I just don't know_.

Jackson and Marcy had been members of the Group of telepaths who had banded together for companionship and mutual protection. Both of them had been trapped by the PD Police in exactly the same way that Harris had been trapped. They were now where Harris would be in a matter of hours--in the Penal Cl.u.s.ter.

Their arrests didn't make sense, either; they had been accused of taking over someone's mind for the purpose of gaining money illegally--illegal, that is, according to the new UN laws that had been pa.s.sed to supersede the various national laws that had previously been in effect.

But Houston had known both men well, and neither of them was the kind of man who would pull such a stunt, much less do it in such a stupid manner.

Dorrine thought: _Well, Dave, this Harris case is out of our hands now; we've got to concentrate on getting others into the Group--we've got to find the other sane ones._

_You're ready to take over here, then?_ he asked.

At the table, several yards away from where Houston was sitting, Dorrine, still looking at the book, smiled faintly.

_I'll have to; you're being transferred back to New York at six in the morning._

Houston allowed a feeling of startled surprise to bridge the gap between their minds. _How'd you know that?_ He hadn't told her, and she couldn't have forced the knowledge from his mind. A telepath can open the mind of a Normal as simply as he might open the pages of a book, but the mind of another Controller is far stronger. One telepath couldn't force anything from the mind of another; all thoughts had to be exchanged voluntarily.

She was still smiling. _We've got a few spies in the UN now_, she told him. _I got the information before you did._

_You knew before you left New York?_ he asked incredulously.

_That's right_, she thought. _The decision was made last night. Why?_

_Nothing_, he told her. _I was just surprised, that's all._ But deep behind the telepathic barrier he had erected against her probing mind, he was thinking something else. He had been a.s.signed to London to capture the Controller--then unknown--who was said to be active in England. But his recall order had been decided upon _before_ Harris was caught--or even suspected. Someone in the UN Psychodeviant Police Supreme Headquarters in New York must have known that Harris would be caught that day!

_Something's bothering you_, Dorrine stated flatly.

_I was thinking about leaving London_, he replied evasively. _I haven't seen you for six months, and now I have to leave again._

_I'll be back in New York within three weeks_, the girl thought warmly.

_I'll be--_

Her thoughts were cut off suddenly by a strident voice in Houston's ear.

"Attention; all-band notice. Robert Bentley Harris, arraigned this evening on a charge of illegal use of psychodeviant powers for the purpose of compounding a felony, has been found guilty as charged. He was therefore sentenced by the Lord Justice of Her Majesty's Court of Star Chamber to be banished from Earth forever, such banishment to be carried out by the United Nations Penology Service at the Queen's pleasure."

The words that were running through Houston's brain, had been transmitted easily to Dorrine. For a moment, neither of them made any comment. Then Houston glanced at his watch.

_Twenty-one minutes_, he thought bitterly. _What took them so long?_

High in the thin ionosphere, seventy miles above the surface of the Earth, a fifteen-hundred-mile-an-hour rocket airliner winged its way westward across the Atlantic, pushing herself forward on the thin, whispering, white-hot jets of her atomic engine. Behind her, the outdistanced sun sank slowly below the eastern horizon.

David Houston wasn't watching the sunrise-in-reverse; he was sitting quietly in his seat, still trying to puzzle out his queer recall to New York. When Hamilton had told him about it over the phone, he'd a.s.sumed that New York, having been notified that Harris had been captured, had decided to send for Houston, now that his job was over.

But now he knew that the order had come through nearly twenty-four hours before Harris was captured.

Did someone at UN Headquarters know that Harris was going to be captured? Or did someone there suspect that there was something odd about Police Operative David Houston?

Or both?

Whatever it was, Houston would have to take his chances; to act suspiciously would be a deadly mistake.