unbearable!" Sonali thought softly.
"That's not a mind," said Dorrine, "it's a sewer."
"I suggest," said Matsukuo, "that we do a little probing. Let's find outwhat makes this thing tick."
"Stay out of my mind!" Sager screamed. "You have no right!"
"You seemed to think you had the right to probe into the helpless mindsof Normals," said Juan Pedro coldly. "We should show you how it feels."
"But they're just animals!" Sager retorted. "I am a Controller!"
"You're a madman," said Matsukuo. "And we must find out what makes youmad."
Synchronizing perfectly, five minds began to probe at the walls thatSager had built up around his personality. And as they probed, Sagerretreated behind ever thicker walls, howling in hatred and anguish.
On and on went the five, needling, pressing at every weak spot, tryingto break him down. Outnumbered and overpowered, it seemed as thoughSager had no chance.
But his insanity was stronger than they suspected. The barriers he builtwere harder, more opaque, and more impenetrable than any they had everseen. The five pushed on, anyway, but their advance slowed tremendously.
Then, mentally, there was a sudden silence.
_Sager?_ they thought.
No answer.
"That's finished it," said Houston. "He's retreated so far behind thosemental barriers that he's cut himself off completely."
"He's not dead, is he?" Dorrine asked.
"Dead?" said Juan Pedro. "Not in the sense you mean. But I think he iscatatonic now; he has lost all touch with the outside. He is as thoughhe were still drugged; he is physically helpless, and mentally blankedout."
"There's one difference," Matsukuo said analytically. "And that is that,although he has cut himself off from us and from the rest of theuniverse, he is still conscious in some little, walled-in compartment ofhis mind. He has no one there but himself--and that, I think, is damnedpoor company."
* * * * *
They waited then. When Pederson awoke, they were ready for him. Hishatred took a slightly different form from Sager's, but the effect wasthe same.
And so were the results when the five bore down on him.
Again they waited. Lasser was next.
At first, it looked as though Lasser would go the way of Sager andPederson, ending up as a hopelessly insane catatonic. Like his cohortsbefore him, Lasser retreated under the full pressure of thethought-probes of the five, building stronger and stronger walls.
But, quite suddenly, all his defenses crumbled. The mental barriers wentdown, shattered and dissolving. Lasser's whole mind lay bare. Instead offighting and hating, Lasser was begging, pleading for help.
Lasser was not basically insane. His mind was twisted and warped, butbeneath the outer shell was a personality that had enough internalstrength to be able to admit that it was wrong and ask for help insteadof retreating into oblivion.
"This one--I think we can do something with," Matsukuo's thoughtwhispered.
* * * * *
Eight bodies, uncomfortable and pain-wracked, floated in space, chainedto tiny asteroids that drifted slowly in their orbits under the constantpull of the sun. Two of them contained minds that were lockedirrevocably within prisons of their own building, sealed off foreverfrom external stimuli, but their suffering was the greater for all that.
The other six, chained though their limbs might be, had minds that werefree--free, even, of any but the most necessary of internal limitations.
Eight bodies, chained to eight lumps of pitted rock, spun endlessly inendless space.
And then the ship came.
The flare of its atomic rocket could be seen for over an hour before itreached the Penal Cluster. The six eyed it speculatively. Although onlytwo of them were facing the proper direction to see it with theirphysical eyes, the impressions of those two were easily transmitted tothe other four.
"Another load of captives," whispered Juan Pedro de Cadiz. "How manythis time, I wonder?"
"How long have we been here?" asked Houston, not expecting any answer.
"Who knows?" It was Lasser. "What we need out here is a clock to tell uswhen we'll die."
"Our oxygen tanks are our clocks," said Sonali. "And they'll notify uswhen the time comes."
"I do believe you morbid-minded people are developing a sense of humor,"said Matsukuo, "but I'm not sure I care for the style too much."
The flare of the rocket grew brighter as the decelerating shipapproached the small cluster of rocks. At last the ship itself tookform, shining in the eternal blaze of the sun. When the whiteness of therocket blaze died suddenly, the ship was only a few dozen yards fromHouston's own asteroid.
And then a mental voice came into the minds of the six prisoners.
"How do you feel, Controllers?"
Only Houston recognized that thought-pattern, but his recognition wastransmitted instantly to the others.
"_Reinhardt!_"
Hermann Reinhardt, Division Chief of the Psychodeviant Police, the oneman most hated and feared by Controllers, was himself a telepath!
"Naturally," said Reinhardt. "Someone had to take control of thesituation. I was the only one who was in a position to do it."
His thoughts were neither hard nor cold; it was almost as if he were oneof them--except for one thing. Only the words of his thoughts camethrough; there were none of the fringe thoughts that the six were usedto in each other.
"That's true," thought Reinhardt. "You see, we have been at this a gooddeal longer than you." Then he directed his thoughts at members of thecrew of the spaceship, but they could still be heard by the sixprisoners. "All right, men, get those people off those rocks. We have tomake room for another batch."
The airlock in the side of the ship opened, and a dozen spacesuited menleaped out. The propulsion units in their hands guided them toward theprison asteroids.
"Give them all anaesthetic except Sager and Pederson," Reinhardtordered. "They won't need it." Then, with a note of apology, "I'm sorrywe'll have to anaesthetize you, but you've been in one position so longthat moving you will be rather painful. We have to get you to a hospitalquickly."
The minds of the six prisoners were frantically pounding questions atthe PD chief, but he gave them no answer. "No; wait until you'rebetter."
The spacesuited rescuers went to the "back" of each asteroid andinjected sleep-gas into the oxygen line that ran from the tank to thespacesuit of the prisoner.
Houston could smell the sweetish, pungent odor in his helmet. Justbefore he blacked out, he hurled one last accusing thought at Reinhardt.
"_You're_ the one who's been framing Controllers!"
"Naturally, Houston," came the answer. "How else could I get you outhere?"
* * * * *
Houston woke up in a hospital bed. He was weak and hungry, but he feltno pain. As he came up from unconsciousness, he felt a fully awake mindguiding him out of the darkness.
It was Reinhardt.
"You're a tough man, Houston," he said mentally. "The others won't wakeup for a while yet."
He was sitting on a chair next to the bed, holding a smoulderingcigarette in one hand. He looked strange, somehow, and it took Houston amoment to realize that there was a smile on that broad, normallyexpressionless face.
Houston focussed his eyes on the man's face. "I want an explanation,Reinhardt," he said aloud. "And it better be a damned good one."
"I give you free access to my mind," Reinhardt said. "See for yourselfif my method wasn't the best one."
* * * * *
Houston probed. The explanation, if not the best, was better than anyHouston could have thought of.
When the hatred of the normal-minded people of Earth had been turnedagainst the Controllers because of the actions of a few megalomaniacs,it had become obvious that legal steps had to be taken to prevent mobviolence.
It had been Reinhardt himself w
ho had suggested the Penal method to theUN government. At first, he had simply thought of it as a method tokeep the Controllers alive until he could think of something better. Butwhen he had discovered, by accident, what a small group of Controllers,alone in space, could do, he had set up the present machinery.
As soon as a Controller was spotted, a careful frame-up was arranged.Then, when several had been found, they were arrested in quicksuccession and sent to the asteroids.
Always and invariably, they had done what Houston's group had done--thesane or potentially sane ones had improved themselves tremendously,while the megalomaniacs had lapsed into catatonia.
"Why couldn't it be done on Earth?" Houston asked.
"We tried it," Reinhardt said. "It didn't work. Safe, on Earth,surrounded by Normals, a Controller still feels the hatred around him.He can't open his mind completely. Only the certain knowledge ofimpending death, and a complete freedom from the hatred of Normals canfree the mind.
"And that's why you couldn't be told beforehand; if you knew you weregoing to be rescued, you wouldn't open up."
Houston nodded. It made sense. "Where are we now?" he asked.
"Antarctica," said Reinhardt. "We've built an outpost here--almostself-sufficient. When you're in better shape physically, I'll show youaround."
"Do you mean that everyone who's been arrested is here, in Antarctica?"
* * * * *
Reinhardt laughed. "No, not by a long shot. Most of us are back out incivilization, searching for new, undiscovered Controllers, so that wecan frame them. And, of course, some of us--the insane ones--have died.They will themselves to die when the going gets too tough."
"Searching for recruits? Then the Group that Dorrine was working forwas--"
Reinhardt shook his head. "No. They were going about it the wrong way,just as you thought. We picked up the whole lot of them last week;they're occupying the asteroids now."
"What do you do with the insane catatonics?"
"Put them under hibernene and keep them alive. We hope, someday, tofigure out a method of restoring their sanity. Until then, let themsleep."
Houston narrowed his eyes. "How long have you known I was a Controller,Reinhardt?"
The Prussian smiled. "Ever since you first tried to probe me.Fortunately, my training enabled me to put up a shield that you couldn'tpenetrate; I seemed like a Normal to you.
"I kept you on because I knew you'd be useful in cracking Lasser and hisgang when the time came. No one else could have done what you did thatnight."
"Thanks," Houston said sincerely. "What's going to happen now? After Iget well, I mean."
"You'll do what the others have done. A little plastic surgery to changeyour face a trifle, a little record-juggling to give you a new identity,and you'll be ready to go back to work for the PD Police.
"If anyone recognizes you, it's easy to take over their minds just longenough to make them forget. We allow that much Controlling."
"And then what?" Houston wanted to know. "What happens in the long run?"
"In a way," said Reinhardt, "your friend Sager was right. TheControllers will eventually become the rulers of Earth. But not by forceor trickery. We must just bide our time. More and more of us are beingborn all the time; the Normals are becoming fewer and fewer. Within acentury, we will outnumber them--we will be the Normals, not they.
"But they'll never know what's going on. The last Normal will diewithout ever knowing that he is in a world of telepaths.
"By the time that comes about, we'll no longer need the Penal Cluster,since Controllers will be born into a world where there is no fear ofnon-telepaths."
"I wonder," Houston mused, "I wonder how this ability came about. Why isthe human race acquiring telepathy so suddenly?"
Reinhardt shrugged. "I can give you many explanations--atomic radiation,cosmic rays, natural evolution. But none of them really explains it.They just make it easier to live with.
"I think something similar must have happened a few hundred thousandyears ago, when Cro-Magnon man, our own ancestors, first developed trueintelligence instead of the pseudo-intelligence, the highly developedinstincts, of the Neanderthals and other para-men.
"Within a relatively short time, the para-men had died out, leaving theCro-Magnon, with his true intelligence, to rule Earth."
Reinhardt stood up. "Why is it happening? We don't know. Maybe we neverwill know, any more than we know why Man developed intelligence." Heshrugged. "Perhaps the only explanation we'll ever have is to call itthe Will of God and let it go at that."
"Maybe that's the best explanation, after all," Houston said.
"Perhaps. Who knows?" Reinhardt crushed his cigarette out in a tray."I'll go now, and let you get some rest. And don't worry; I'll have younotified as soon as Dorrine starts to come out of it."
"Thanks--Chief," Houston said as Reinhardt left the room.
David Houston lay back in his bed and closed his eyes.
For the first time in his life, he felt completely at peace--withhimself, and with the Universe.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ September 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends