Troublemakers. Part 7

As he picked his way around the dust heap that had been the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in what had been Public Square, his eyes red-rimmed from crying at the loss of humanity, he saw something he had not seen in Beirut or Venice or London. He saw the movement of another human being.

Celestial choruses sang in his head as he broke into a run across the pitted and blasted remains of Euclid Avenue. It was a woman!

She saw him, and in the very posture of her body, he knew she was filled with the same glory he felt. She knew! She began running toward him, her arms outstretched. They seemed to swim toward each other in a ballet of slow motion. He stumbled once, but got to his feet quickly and went on. They detoured around the crumpled tin of tortured metal that had once been automobiles, and met in front of the shattered carca.s.s that was, in a time seemingly eons before, The May Co.

"I'm the last man!" he blurted. He could not keep the words inside, they fought to fill the air. "I'm the last, the very last. They're all dead, everyone but us. I'm the last man, and you're the last woman, and we'll have to mate and start the race again, and this time we'll do it right. No war, no hate, no bigotry, nothing but goodness . . . we'll do it, you'll see, it'll be fine, a bright new shining world from all this death and terror."

Her face was lit with an ethereal beauty, even beneath the soot and deprivation. "Yes, yes," she said.

"It'll be just like that. I love you, because we're all there is left to love, each other."

He touched her hand. "I love you. What is your name?"

She flushed slightly. "Eve," she said. "What's yours?"

"Bernie," he said.

DEEPER THAN THE DARKNESS.

Since I was in trouble from the git-go (h.e.l.l, I was taken to the Princ.i.p.al's Office on my first day in kindergarten; not ten minutes after my mother let go of my hand and left me in that cla.s.sroom full of babies and sandboxes) (I'll tell youthat tale another time, but I suspect Miss Whatever Her Name Was, the kindergarten teacher at Lathrop Grade School in 1939 or '40, whatever it was, in Painesville, Ohio, I'll bet she still has the marks of my fangs in her right hand), I knew early on that I would have to pretend to be one of the crowd, as best I could fake it, or get the c.r.a.p kicked out of me at recess and after-school every day. Well, like Alf Gunnderson in this next story, I managed to hide my true personality a little . . . but not very well, and not for very long times at a stretch. Folks, believe me on this one: if you are what we call a "green monkey," the other apes are going to rip you a new one every time they smell you. Hiding out is an art. But don't hide yourself so well that others like you can't find you.

And don't follow the crowd so much that eventually you're not playing at it. Don't wind up doing it sowell that the mask you've worn to perfection becomes your real face. Protect yourself, but don't get a.s.similated. And never wage a land war in Asia. I just thought I'd throw that in. You never know.

They came to Alf Gunnderson in the p.a.w.nee County jail.

He was sitting, hugging his bony knees, against the plasteel wall of the cell. On the plasteel floor lay an ancient, three-string mandolin he had borrowed from the deputy. He had been plunking, with some talent, all that hot, summer day. Under his thin b.u.t.tocks the empty trough of his mattressless bunk curved beneath his weight. He was an extremely tall man, even hunched up that way.

He was more than tired-looking, more than weary. His was an inside weariness . . . he was a gaunt, empty-looking man. His hair fell lanky and drab and gray-brown in shocks over a low forehead. His eyes seemed to be peas, withdrawn from their pods and placed in a starkly white face. It was difficult to tell whether he could see from them.

Their blankness only accented the total cipher he seemed. There was no inch of expression or recognition on his face, in the line of his body.

More, he was a thin man. He seemed to be a man who had given up the Search long ago. His face did not change its hollow stare at the plasteel-barred door opposite, even as it swung back to admit the two nonent.i.ties.

The two men entered, their stride as alike as the un.o.btrusive gray mesh suits they wore; as alike as the faces that would fade from memory moments after they had turned. The turnkey - a grizzled country deputy with a minus 8 rating - stared after the men with open wonder on his bearded face.

One of the gray-suited men turned, pinning the wondering stare to the deputy's face. His voice was calm and unrippled. "Close the door and go back to your desk." The words were cold and paced. They brooked no opposition. It was obvious: they were Mindees.

The roar of a late afternoon invers.p.a.ce ship split the waiting moment outside, then the turnkey slammed the door, palming it lokt.i.te. He walked back out of the cell block, hands deep in his coverall pockets. His head was lowered as though he were trying to solve a complex problem. It, too, was obvious: he was trying to block his thoughts off from those G.o.dd.a.m.ned Mindees.

When he was gone, the telepaths circled Gunnderson slowly. Their faces softly altered, subtly, and personality flowed in with quickness. They shot each other confused glances.

Him?the first man thought, nodding slightly at the still, knee-hugging prisoner.

That's what the report said, Ralph. The other man removed his forehead-concealing snapbrim and sat down on the edge of the bunk-trough. He touched Gunnderson's leg with tentative fingers.He's not thinking, for G.o.d's sake! the thought flashed.I can't get a thing .

Incredulousness sparkled in the thought.

He must be blocked off by trauma-barrier, came the reply from the telepath named Ralph.

"Is your name Alf Gunnderson?" the first Mindee inquired softly, a hand on Gunnderson's shoulder.

The expression never changed. The head swiveled slowly and the dead eyes came to bear on the dark-suited telepath. "I'm Gunnderson," he replied briefly. His tones indicated no enthusiasm, nocuriosity.

The first man looked up at his partner, doubt wrinkling his eyes, pursing his lips. He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say,Who knows?

He turned back to Gunnderson.

Immobile, as before. Hewn from rock, silent as the pit.

"What are you in here for, Gunnderson?" He spoke as though he were unused to words. The halting speech of the telepath.

The dead stare swung back to the plasteel bars. "I set the woods on fire," he said shortly.

The Mindee's face darkened at the prisoner's words. That was what the report had said. The report that had come in from one of the remote corners of the country.

The American Continent was a modern thing, all plasteel and printed circuits, all relays and fast movement, but there had been areas of backwoods country that had never taken to civilizing. They still maintained roads and jails, and fishing holes and forests. Out of one of these had come three reports, s.p.a.ced an hour apart, with startling ramifications - if true. They had been snapped through the primary message banks in Capitol City in Buenos Aires, reeled through the computalyzers, and handed to the Bureau for check-in. While the invers.p.a.ce ships plied between worlds, while Earth fought its transgalactic wars, in a rural section of the American Continent, a strange thing was happening.

A mile and a half of raging forest fire, and Alf Gunnderson the one responsible. So they had sent two Bureau Mindees.

"How did it start, Alf?"

The dead eyes closed momentarily, in pain, opened, and he answered, "I was trying to get the pot to heat up. Trying to set the kindling under it to burning. I fired myself too hard." A flash of self-pity and unbearable hurt came into his face, disappeared just as quickly. Empty once more, he added, "I always do."

The first man exhaled sharply, got up and put on his hat. The personality flowed out of his face. He was a carbon copy of the other telepath once more.

"This is the one," he said.

"Come on, Alf," the Mindee named Ralph said. "Let's go."

The authority of his voice no more served to move Gunnderson than their initial appearance had. He sat as he was. The two men looked at one another.

What's the matter with him?the second one flashed.

If you had what he's got - you'd be a bit buggy yourself, the first one replied. They were no longer individuals; they were Bureau men, studiedly, exactly, precisely alike in every detail.

They hoisted the prisoner under his arms, lifted him off the bunk, unresisting. The turnkey came at a call, and still marveling at these men who had come in - shown Bureau cards, sworn him to deadly silence, and were now taking the tramp firebug with them - opened the cell door.

As they pa.s.sed before him, the telepath named Ralph turned suddenly sharp and piercing eyes on the oldguard. "This is government business, mister," he warned. "One word of this, and you'll be a prisoner in your own jail. Clear?"

The turnkey bobbed his head quickly.

"And stop thinking, mister." The Mindee added nastily, "We don't like to be referred to as slimy peekers!" The turnkey turned a shade paler and watched silently as they disappeared down the hall, out of the p.a.w.nee County jail-house. He waited, blanking fiercely, till he heard the whine of the Bureau solocab rising into the afternoon sky.

Now what the devil did they want with a crazy firebug hobo like that? He thought viciously,G.o.ddam Mindees!

After they had flown him cross-continent to Buenos Aires, deep in the heart of the blasted Argentine desert, they sent him in for testing.

The testing was exhaustive. Even though he did not really cooperate, there were things he could not keep them from learning; things that showed up because they were there: Such as his ability to start fires with his mind.

Such as the fact that he could not control the blazes.

Such as the fact that he had been b.u.mming for fifteen years in an effort to find seclusion.

Such as the fact that he had become a tortured and unhappy man because of his strange mind-power.

"Alf," said the bodiless voice from the rear of the darkened auditorium, "light that cigarette on the table.

Put it in your mouth and make it light, Alf. Without a match."

Alf Gunnderson stood in the circle of light. He shifted from leg to leg on the blazing stage, and eyed the cylinder of white paper on the table.

It was starting again. The harrying, the testing, the staring with strangeness. He was different - even from the other accredited psioid types - and they would try to put him away. It had happened before, it was happening now. There was no real peace for him.

"I don't smoke," he said, which was not true. But this was brother kin to the uncountable police line-ups he had gone through, all the way across the American Continent, across Earth, and from A Centauri IX back here. It annoyed him, and it terrified him, for he knew he was trapped.

Except this time, there were no tough, rock-faced cops out there in the darkness beyond his sight. This time there were tough, rock-faced Bureau men, and s.p.a.ceCom officials.

Even Terrence, head of s.p.a.ceCom, was sitting in one of those pneumoseats, watching him steadily.

Daring him to be what he was!

He lifted the cylinder hesitantly, almost put it back.

"Smoke it, Alf!" snapped a different voice, deeper in tone, from the ebony before him.

He put the cigarette between his lips. They waited.

He seemed to want to say something, perhaps to object. Alf Gunnderson's heavy brows drew down. Hisblank eyes became - if it were possible - even blanker. A sharp, denting V appeared between the brows.

The cigarette flamed into life.

A tongue of fire leaped up from the tip. In an instant it had consumed tobacco, paper, filter and de-nicotizer in one roar. The fire slammed against Gunnderson's lips, searing them, lapping at his nose, his face.

He screamed, fell on his face and beat at the flames with his hands.

Suddenly the stage was clogged with running men in the blue and charcoal suits of the s.p.a.ceCom.

Gunnderson lay writhing on the floor, a wisp of charry smoke rising from his face. One of the s.p.a.ceCom officials broke the cap on an extinguisher vial and the spray washed over the body of the fallen man.

"Get the Mallaport! Get the G.o.ddammed Mallaport, w.i.l.l.ya!" A young Ensign with brush-cut blond hair, first to reach the stage - as though he had been waiting crouched below - cradled Gunnderson's head in his muscular arms, brushing with horror at the flakes of charred skin. He had the watery blue eyes of the s.p.a.cemen, those who had seen terrible things; yet his eyes were more frightened now than any man's eyes were meant to be.

In a few minutes the angular, spade-pawed Malleable-Transporter was smoothing the skin on Gunnderson's face, realigning the atoms - shearing away the burned flesh, coating it with vibrant, healthy pink skin.

Another few moments and the psioid was finished; the burns had been erased; Gunnderson was new and whole, save for the patches of healthier-seeming skin that dotted his face.

All through it he had been murmuring. As the Mallaport finished his mental work, stood up with a sigh, the words filtered through to the young s.p.a.ceCom Ensign. He stared at Gunnderson a moment, then raised his watery blue eyes to the other officials standing about.

He stared at them with a mixture of fear and bewilderment.

Gunnderson had been saying: "Let me die, please let me die, I want to die, won't you let me die, please!"

The ship was heading toward Omalo, sun of the Delgart system. It had been translated into invers.p.a.ce by a Driver named Carina Correia. She had warped the ship through, and gone back to her deep-sleep, till she was needed at Omalo snap-out.

Now the ship whirled through the crazy quilt of invers.p.a.ce, cutting through to the star-system of Earth's adversary.

Gunnderson sat in the cabin with the brush-cut blond Ensign. All through the trip, since blast-off and snap-out, the pyrotic had been kept in his stateroom. This was the newest of the Earth s.p.a.ceCom ships, yet he had seen none of it. Just this tiny stateroom, in the constant company of the usually stoical Ensign.

The s.p.a.ceCom man's watery blue eyes swept between the pallid man and the teleport-proof safe set in the cabin's bulkhead.

"Any idea why they're sending us so deep into Delgart territory?" the Ensign fished. "It's pretty tight lines up this far. Must be something big. Any idea?"

Gunnderson's eyes came up from their focus on his boot-tops, and stared at the s.p.a.ceman. He idlyflipped the harmonica he had requested before blast-off, which he had used to pa.s.s away the long hours invers.p.a.ce. "No idea. How long have you been at war with the Delgarts?"

"Don't you even know who your planet's at war with?"

"I've been rural for many years. But aren't theyalways at war with someone?"

The Ensign looked startled. "Not unless it's to protect the peace of the galaxies. Earth is apeace -loving .

Gunnderson cut him off. "Yes, I know. But how long have you been at war with the Delgarts? I thought they were our allies under some Treaty Pact or other?"

The s.p.a.ceman's face contorted in a picture of conditioned hatred. "We've been after the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds since they jumped one of our mining planets outside their cl.u.s.ter." He twisted his lips in open loathing. We'll clean the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds out soon enough! Teachthem to jump peaceful Earthmen."

Gunnderson wished he could shut out the words. He had heard the same story all the way from A Centauri IX and back. Someone had always jumped someone else . . . someone was always at war with someone else . . . there were always b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to be cleaned out . . . never any peace . . . never any peace . . .

The invership whipped past the myriad odd-colors of invers.p.a.ce, hurtling through that not-s.p.a.ce toward the alien cl.u.s.ter. Gunnderson sat in the teleport-proof stateroom, triple-coded lokt.i.te, and waited. He had no idea what they wanted of him, why they had tested him, why they had sent him through the pre-flight checkups, why he was in not-s.p.a.ce. But he knew one thing: whatever it was, there was to be no peace forhim . . . ever.

He silently cursed the strange mental power he had. The power to make the molecules ofanything speed up tremendously, making them grind against one another, causing combustion. A strange, channeled teleport faculty that was useless for anything but the creation of fire. He d.a.m.ned it soulfully, wishing he had been born deaf, mute, blind, incapable of having to ward off the world.

From the first moment of his life when he had realized his strange power, he had been haunted. No control, no identification, no communication. Cut off. Tagged as an oddie. Not even the pleasures of being an acknowledged psioid, like the Mindees, or the invaluable Drivers, or the Blasters, or the Mallaports who could move the atoms of flesh to their design. He was an oddie. A strange-breed, and worse: he was a non-directive psioid. Tagged deadly and uncontrollable. He could set the fires, but he could not control them. The molecules were too tiny, too quickly imitative for him to stop the activity once it was started. It had to stop of its own volition . . . and occasionally it was too long in stopping.

Once he had thought himself normal, once he had thought of leading an ordinary life - of perhaps becoming a musician. But that idea had died aflaming, as all other normal ideas that had followed it.

First the ostracism, then the hunting, then the arrests and the prison terms, one after another. Now something new - something he could not understand. What did they want with him? It was obviously in connection with the mighty battle being fought between Earth and the Delgarts, but of what use could his unreliable powers be?

Why was he in this most marvelous of the new s.p.a.ceCom ships, heading toward the central sun of the enemy cl.u.s.ter? And why should he help Earth in any case?

At that moment the locks popped, the safe broke open, and the clanging of the alarms was heard to thebowels of the invership.

The Ensign stopped him as he started to rise, started toward the safe. The Ensign thumbed a b.u.t.ton on his wrist-console.

"Hold it, Mr. Gunnderson. I wasn't told what was in there, but I was told to keep you away from it until the other two got here."

Gunnderson slumped back hopelessly on the acceleration-bunk. He dropped the harmonica to the metal floor and lowered his head into his hands. "What other two?"