"Of course, Mr. Reich."
"No questions asked. No tales told?"
"Certainly not, Mr. Reich."
"My problem's murder, Chervil. I want to find out who's trying to kill me. Will you do me that favor? Will you peep someone for me?"
"I should imagine the police would be able to—"
"The police?" Reich laughed hysterically, then clutched himself in agony as the broken rib caught.
"I want you to peep a cop for me. Chervil. A big cop. The Commissioner of cops. D'you understand?" He let go of the tree and lurched to Chervil. "I want to visit my friend the Commissioner and ask him a few questions. I want you to be there to tell me the truth. Will you come to Crabbe's office and peep him for me? Will you just do it and forget about it? Will you?"
"Yes, Mr. Reich...I will."
"What? An honest peeper! How about that? Come on. Let's jet."
Reich stumbled out of the esplanade with a horrible gait. Chervil followed, overwhelmed by the fury in the man that drove him through injury, through fever, through agony to police headquarters. There, Reich hulled and roared past clerks and guards until the mud-streaked blood-smeared figure burst into Commissioner Crabbe's elaborate ebony and silver office.
"My God, Reich!" Crabbe was aghast. "It is you, isn't it? Ben Reich?"
"Sit down, Chervil," Reich said. He turned to Crabbe. "It's me. Get a full perspective. I'm half a corpse, Crabbe. The red stuff is blood. The rest is slime. I've had a great day... a glorious day... and I want to know where the hell the police have been? Where's your God Almighty Prefect Powell? Where's your—"
"Half a corpse? What are you telling me, Ben?"
"I'm telling you that I was almost murdered three times today. This boy..." Reich pointed to Chervil. "This boy just found me in the Inlet Esplanade more dead than alive. Look at me, for Christ's sake. Look at me!"
"Murdered!" Crabbe thumped his desk emphatically. "Of course. That Powell is a fool. I should never have listened to him. The man who killed D'Courtney is trying to kill you."
Behind his back, Reich motioned savagely to Chervil.
"I told Powell you were innocent. He wouldn't listen to me," Crabbe said. "Even when that infernal adding machine in the District Attorney's office told him you were innocent, he wouldn't listen."
"The machine said I was innocent?"
"Of course it did. There's no case against you. There never was a case against you. And by the sacred Bill of Rights, you'll have the protection from the murderer that any honest law-abiding citizen deserves. I'll see to that at once," Crabbe strode to the door. "And I think this is all I'll need to settle Mr. Powell's hash for good! Don't go, Ben. I want to talk to you about your support for the Solar Senatorship..."
The door opened and slammed. Reich reeled and fought his way back to the world. He looked at three Chervils. "Well?" he muttered. "Well?"
"He's telling the truth, Mr. Reich."
"About me? About Powell?"
"Well..." Chervil paused judiciously, weighing the truth.
"Jet, you bastard," Reich groaned. "How long do you think I can keep my fuses from blowing."
"He's telling the truth about you," Chervil said quickly. "The Prosecution Computer has declined to authorize any action against you for the D'Courtney murder. Mr. Powell has been forced to abandon the case and... well... his career is very much in jeopardy."
"Is that true!" Reich staggered to the boy and seized his shoulders. "Is that true, Chervil? I've been cleared? I can go about my business? No one's going to bother me?"
"You've been dropped, Mr. Reich. You can go about your business. No one's going to bother you."
Reich burst into a roar of triumphant laughter. The pain of his bruised and broken body made him groan as he laughed, and his eyes smarted with tears. He pulled himself up, brushed past Chervil and left the Commissioner's office. He was more a Neanderthal vestige as he paraded down headquarters' corridors streaked with blood and mud, laughing and groaning, bearing himself with limping arrogance. He needed a stag's carcass on his shoulders or a cave bear borne in triumph behind him to complete the picture.
"I'll complete the picture with Powell's head," he told himself. "Stuffed and mounted on my wall. I'll complete the picture with the D'Courtney Cartel stuffed into my pockets. By God give me time I'll complete a picture with the Galaxy inside the frame!"
He passed through the steel portals of headquarters and stood for a moment on the steps gazing at the rain-swept streets... at the amusement center across the square, block after block blazing under a single mutual transparent dome... at the open shops lining the upper footways, all bustle and brilliance as the city's night shopping began... the towering office buildings in the background great two-hundred story cubes... the lace tracery of skyways linking them together... the twinkling running lights of Jumpers bobbing up and down like a plague of crimson-eyed grasshoppers in a field...
"And I'll own you!" he shouted, raising his arms to engulf the universe. "I'll own you all! Bodies, passions, and souls!"
Then his eye caught the tall, ominous, familiar figure crossing the square, watching him covertly over its shoulder. A figure of black shadows sparkling with raindrop jewels... looking looming, silent, horrible... A Man With No Face.
There was a strangled cry. The fuses blew. Like a blighted tree, Reich fell to the ground.
* * *
At one minute to nine, ten of the fifteen members of the Esper Guild Council assembled in President T'sung's office. Emergency business required their attention. At one minute after nine, the meeting was adjoumed with the business completed. Within those one hundred and twenty Esper seconds, the following took place:
* * *
A gavel pounding
A clock face
Hour hand at 9
Minute hand at 59
Second hand at 60
EMERGENCY MEETING
To examine a request for Mass Cathexis with Lincoln Powell as the human canal for the Capitalized energy.
(Consternation)
T'sung: You can't be serious, Powell. How can you make such a request? What can possibly require such an extraordinary and dangerous measure?
Powell: An astonishing development in the D'Courtney Case which I would like you all to examine.
(Examination)
Powell: You all know that Reich is our most dangerous enemy. He is supporting the Anti-Esper smear campaign. Unless that is blocked we may suffer the usual history of minority groups.
@kins: True enough.
Powell: He is also supporting the League of Esper Patriots. Unless that organization is blocked we may be plunged into a civil war and be lost forever in a morass of internal chaos.
Franion: That's true too.
Powell: But there is an additional development which you have all examined. Reich is about to become a Galactic focal point... A crucial link between the positive past and the probable future. He is on the verge of a powerful reorganization at this moment. Time is of the essence. If Reich can readjust and reorient before I can reach him, he will become immune to our reality, invulnerable to our attack, and the deadly enemy of Galactic reason and reality.
(Alarm)
@kins: Surely, you're exaggerating, Powell.
Powell: Am I? Inspect the picture with me. Look at Reich's position in time and space. Will not his beliefs become the world's belief? Will not his reality become the world's reality? Is he not, in his critical position of power, energy, and intellect, a sure road to utter destruction?
(Conviction)
T'sung: That's true. Nevertheless I'm reluctant to authorize the Mass Cathexis Measure. You will recall that the MCM has invariably destroyed the human energy canal in past attempts. You're too valuable to be destroyed, Powell.
Powell: I must be permitted to run the risk, Reich is one of the rare Universe-shakers... a child as yet, but about to mature. And all reality... Espers, Normals, Life, the earth, the solar system, the universe itself... all reality ha
ngs precarlously on his awakening. He cannot be permitted to awake to the wrong reality. I call the question.
Franion: You're asking us to vote your death.
Powell: It's my death against the eventual death of everything we know. I call the question.
@kins: Let Reich awaken as he will. We have the time and the warning to attack him at another crossroad.
Powell: Question! I call the question!
(Request granted)
Meeting adjourned
Clock face
Hour hand at 9
Minute hand at 01
Second hand at Demolition
* * *
Powell arrived home an hour later. He had made his will, paid his bills, signed his papers, arranged everything. There had been dismay at the Guild. There was dismay when he came home. Mary Noyes read what he had done the instant he entered.
"Linc—"
"No fuss. It's got to be done."
"But—"
"There's a chance it won't kill me. Oh... One reminder. Lab wants a brain autopsy as soon as I'm dead... if I die. I've signed all the papers, but I wish you'd help in case there's trouble. They'd like to have the body before rigor. If they can't get the corpse they'll settle for the head. See to it, will you?"
"Linc!"
"Sorry. Now you'd better pack and take the baby up to Kingston Hospital. She won't be safe here."
"She isn't a baby any more. She—"
Mary turned and ran upstairs, trailing the familiar sensory impact: Snow / mint / tulips / taffeta... and now mixed with terror and tears. Powell sighed, then smiled as a highly poised teen-ager appeared at the head of the stairs and came down with grand insouciance. She was wearing a dress and an expression of rehearsed surprise. She paused halfway down to let him take in the dress and the manner.
"Why! It's Mr. Powell, is it not?"
"It is. Good morning, Barbara."
"And what brings you to our little domain this morning?" She came down the rest of the stairs with her fingertips brushing the bannister and tripped on the bottom step. "Oh Pip!" she squawked.
Powell caught her. "Pop," he said.
"Bim."
"Bam."
She looked up at him. "You stand right here. I'm going to come down those stairs again and I bet I do it perfect."
"I'll bet you don't."
She turned, trotted up and posed again at the top step. "Dear Mr. Powell, what a scatter-brain you must think me..." She began the grand descent. "You must re-evaluate your opinion of me. I am no longer the mere child I was yesterday. I am ages and ages older. You must regard me as an adult from now on." She negotiated the bottom step and regarded him intently. "Re-evaluate? Is that right?"
"Revaluate is sometimes preferred, dear."
"I thought it had an extra sound." Suddenly she laughed, pushed him into a chair, and plumped down on his lap. Powell groaned.
"Gently, Barbara. You're ages older and pounds heavier."
"Listen," she said. "What ever made me think you was... Were? Were my father?"
"What's the matter with me as a father?"
"Let's be frank. Real frank."
"Sure."
"Do you feel like a father toward me? Because I don't feel like a daughter toward you."
"Oh? How do you feel?"
"I asked first, so you go first."
"My feelings toward you are those of a loving and dutiful son."
"No. Be serious."
"I have resolved to be a trustworthy son to all women until Vulcan assumes its rightful place is the Community of Planets."
She flushed angrily and got up from his lap. "I wanted you to be serious, because I need advice. But if you—"
"I'm sorry, Barbara. What is it?"
She knelt alongside him and took his hand. "I'm all mixed up about you."
She looked into his eyes with the alarming directness of the young. "You know."
After a pause, he nodded. "Yes. I know."
"And you're all mixed up about me, too. I know."
"Yes, Barbara. That's true. I am."
"Is it wrong?"
Powell heaved up from the chair and began pacing unhappily. "No, Barbara, it isn't wrong. It's... mistimed."
"I want you to tell me about it."
"Tell you...? Yes, I suppose I'd better. I... I'll put it this way, Barbara. The two of us are four people. There's two of you, and two of me."
"Why?"
"You've been sick, dear. So we had to turn you into a baby and let you grow up again. That's why you're two people. The grown-up Barbara inside, and the baby outside."
"And you?"
"I'm two grown-up people. One of them is me... Powell... The other is a member of the governing Council of the Esper Guild."
"What's that?"
"It doesn't need explaining. It's the part of me that's got me mixed up... God knows, maybe it's the baby part. I don't know."
She considered earnestly, then said slowly. "When I don't feel like a daughter to you... which me feels like that?"
"I don't know, Barbara."
"You do know. Why won't you say?" She came to him and put her arms around his neck... a grown-up woman with the manner of a child. "If it isn't wrong, why won't you say? If I love you—"
"Who said anything about love!"
"It's what we're talking about, isn't it? lsn't it? I love you and you love me. Isn't that it?"
"All right," Powell thought desperately. "Here it is. What are you going to do? Admit the truth?"
"Yes!" From the stairs. Mary was descending with a travelling case in her hand. "Admit the truth."
"She isn't a peeper."
"Forget that. She's a woman and she's in love with you. You're in love with her. Please, Linc, give yourselves a chance."
"A chance for what? An affair if I get out of this Reich mess alive? That's all it could be. You know the Guild won't let us marry normals."
"She'll settle for that. She'll be grateful to settle for that. Ask me. I know."
"And if I don't come out alive? She'll have nothing... Nothing but half a memory of half a love."
"No, Barbara," he said. "That isn't it at all."
"It is," she insisted. "It is!"
"No. It's the baby part of you talking. The baby thinks she's in love with me. The woman is not."
"She'll grow up into the woman."
"And she'll forget all about me."
"You'll make her remember."
"Why should I, Barbara?"
"Because you feel that way about me, too. I know you do."
Powell laughed. "Baby! Baby! Baby! What makes you think I'm in love with you that way? I'm not. I've never been."
"You are!"
"Open your eyes, Barbara. Look at me. Look at Mary. You're ages older, aren't you? Can't you understand? Do I have to explain the obvious?"
"For God's sake, Linc!"
"Sorry, Mary. Got to use you."
"I'm getting ready to say goodbye... Maybe for good... Do I have to endure this? Isn't it bad enough for me already?"
"Shhhhh. Gently, dear..."
Barbara stared at Mary, then at Powell. She shook her head slowly. "You're lying."
"Am I? Look at me." He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her face. Dishonest Abe came to his assistance. His expression was kind, tolerant, amused, patronizing. "Look at me, Barbara."
"No!" she cried. "Your face is lying. It's... It's hateful! I — " She burst into tears and sobbed: "Oh go away. Why don't you go away?"
"We're going away, Barbara." Mary said. She came forward, took the girl's arm and led her to the door.
"There's a Jumper waiting, Mary."
"There's me waiting, Linc. For you. Always. And the Chervils & @kins & Jordans &&&&&&&—"
"I know. I know. I love you all. Kisses. XXXXXX. Blessings..."
Image of four-leaf clover, rabbits' feet, horseshoes...
Bawdy response of Powell emerging from slok covered with diamonds.
&nbs
p; Faint laughter.
Farewell.
He stood in the doorway whistling a crooked, plaintive tune, watching the Jumper disappear into the steel-blue sky boring north toward Kingston Hospital. He was exhausted. A little proud of himself for having made the sacrifice. Intensely ashamed of himself for feeling proud. Clearly melancholic. Should he take a grain of Potassium Niacate and kick himself up into the manic curve? What the hell was the use? Look at that great foul city of seventeen and one half million souls and not one soul for him. Look at—
The first impulse came. A thin trickle of latent energy. He felt it distinctly and glanced at his watch. Ten-twenty. So soon? So quickly? Good. He'd better get ready.
He turned into the house and darted up the stairs to his dressing room. The impulses came pattering... like the preliminary raindrops before a storm. His psyche began to throb and vibrate as he reached out and absorbed those tiny streams of latent energy. He changed his clothes, dressed for all weather, and—
And what? The pattering had become a drizzle, washing over him, filling his consciousness with ague... with grinding emotional flashes... with — Yes, nutrient capsules. Hold on to that. Nutrient. Nutrient. Nutrient! He tumbled down the stairs into the kitchen. Found the plastic bulb, cracked it and swallowed a dozen capsules.
The energy came in torrents now. From each Esper in the city, a trickle of latent power that merged and merged into a stream, a river, a swirling sea of Mass Cathexis directed toward Powell, tuned to Powell. He opened all blocks and absorbed it all. His nervous system superheterodyned and screamed and a turbine in his mind whirled faster and faster with a mounting intolerable whine.
He was out of the house, wandering through the streets, blind, deaf, senseless, immersed in that boiling mass of latent energy... like a ship with sails caught in the nexus of a typhoon, fighting to convert a whirlpool of wind into the motive power that would lead to safety... S. Powell fought to absorb that fearful torrent, to Capitalize that latent energy, to Cathectize and direct it toward the Demolition of Reich before it was too late, too late, too late, too late, too late...